www.delorie.com/archives/browse.cgi   search  
Mail Archives: cygwin/1999/12/16/13:30:35

Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
List-Archive: <http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>, <http://sourceware.cygnus.com/ml/#faqs>
Sender: cygwin-owner AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Message-ID: <38592FD4.47C6B13C@veritas.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 10:30:44 -0800
From: Bob McGowan <Robert DOT McGowan AT veritas DOT com>
Organization: VERITAS Software
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; U)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Paul Bailey <pmbailey AT senet DOT com DOT au>
CC: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Subject: Re: Windows/Cygwin directory name stuff
References: <001001bf47ea$1f66e6a0$8400000a AT costa DOT cadenet DOT com DOT br>

Andre Oliveira da Costa wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: cygwin-owner AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
> > [mailto:cygwin-owner AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com]On Behalf Of Paul Bailey
> > Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 3:01 PM
> >
> [...]
> > Is there some mechanism to navigate in bash through a filesystem where
> > directories have spaces in their names?  (I mean, I know Unix
> > sees separate
> > words after a command as an argument list, but that doesn't apply in the
> > case of "cd" since I don't think you can cd into two separate directories
> > simultaneously, in the same shell, at the same time.)
> 
> You see, the shell does exactly what it should do: interpret the command
> line, dealing with wildcards and separating arguments to commands. If a
> particular command cannot handle multiple arguments (e.g. 'cd'), it's not
> the shell's business. If there's an error with the parsing of the command
> line, the shell complains; if not, it's the command that complains.
> 
> As for the filenames with spaces on it, you can have them on UNIX (and,
> therefore, cygwin) too; you just have to tell the shell not to interpret
> them, so that they are treated literally as part of the arguments. You do
> this by prefixing them with a backslash ('\') or by putting quotes (single
> or double) around the names of which they are part of. BTW: this is valid
> for other special chars as well (*, [, ], {, } etc.).
> 
> HTH,
> 
> Andre

To round out this discussion, there is ONLY ONE character that UNIX (the
kernel) and therefor cygwin (the DLL) really cares about as "special"
and that is the forward slash (/).  This is the delimiter in a path
between the various names.  You _cannot_ have a name that contains a
literal forward slash.  Otherwise, any character is legal.

The interpretation of other characters, as special or not, depends on
the application being used, as mentioned in other posts to this
discussion.

-- 
Bob McGowan
Staff Software Quality Engineer
VERITAS Software
rmcgowan AT veritas DOT com

--
Want to unsubscribe from this list?
Send a message to cygwin-unsubscribe AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com

- Raw text -


  webmaster     delorie software   privacy  
  Copyright © 2019   by DJ Delorie     Updated Jul 2019