From: fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) Subject: Re: cygnus bugs 15 Jul 1997 02:20:01 -0700 Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <199707150754.RAA05897.cygnus.gnu-win32@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU> References: <199707121921.JAA02783@haleakala.aloha.net> <199707130728.RAA03575@murlibobo.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <33c8f0a3.1384462@world.std.com> <199707140254.MAA02915@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <33C9D7BB.6D8F@wgn.net> Original-To: gnu-win32@cygnus.com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com "$Bill Luebkert" writes: >Fergus Henderson wrote: >> >> franl@world.std.omit-this.com (Francis Litterio) writes: >> >> >[Fergus Henderson wrote:] >> > >> >> How can cygwin know which arguments are pathnames and which are >> >> just ordinary strings that should not be transformed in this manner? >> > >> >Cygwin can know because the strings that are pathnames are passed to >> >open(), [...] >> >> No, in the case that Tim Newsham was referring to, "vi is not compiled >> with cygwin", and so the strings that are pathnames are not passed >> to cygwin's open(). > >Maybe what he wants is for bash to transform the paths that >fall on mountpoints. This seems fairly trivial. You still didn't answer the question: how can cygwin know which arguments are pathnames? Finding a correct solution to this problem is entirely non-trivial. If you mean that cygwin should treat everything that looks like it might be a pathname as a pathname, then that is not a correct solution, and I think an incorrect solution is going to cause more problems than it solves. For example, consider the command `sed /usr/p /usr/p'. In that command, the first argument is a sed command, meaning "print all lines containing `usr'", while the second argument is a file name. -- Fergus Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp. - For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".