X-Spam-Check-By:	sourceware.org
To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
From:	Eric Blake <ebb9 AT byu DOT net>
Subject:	Re: Bash (under Cygwin) problem with colon
Date:	Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:43:35 +0000 (UTC)
Lines:	25
Message-ID:	<loom.20070323T183847-47@post.gmane.org>
References:	<46040E4F DOT 1070200 AT vogon DOT net>
Mime-Version:	1.0
User-Agent:	Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/)
X-IsSubscribed:	yes
Mailing-List:	contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm
List-Id:	<cygwin.cygwin.com>
List-Subscribe:	<mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Archive:	<http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post:	<mailto:cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
List-Help:	<mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com>, <http://sourceware.org/ml/#faqs>
Sender:	cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com
Mail-Followup-To:	cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Delivered-To:	mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com

Philip Peake <philip <at> vogon.net> writes:

> 
> The colon (:) character appears to be being misinterpreted.

That's Windows for you!

> 
> As an example:
> 
>    $  > xxx:yyy

On Windows 9x, that is an invalid file name.  On NT class machines, that is a 
command to create an alternate stream (google this list for prior discussion on 
the matter).  In short, : is not a valid Windows filename character, because 
Windows treats it as a trigger for special-casing.  It is not bash's fault: 
bash is not handling it as a comment, but is just passing the string "xxx:yyy" 
unchanged through to Windows' file handling routines.  A managed mount might 
help you out in this case, but in general, filenames designed to be portable to 
multiple systems MUST NOT contain a colon.

-- 
Eric Blake
volunteer cygwin bash maintainer



--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/

- Raw text -