From: cgf@cygnus.com (Christopher G. Faylor) Subject: Re: #!/bin/sh troubles 29 Dec 1998 01:53:15 GMT Message-ID: <769cmb$rm5$1@cronkite.cygnus.com> References: X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test63 (15 March 1998) In article , Christopher Seawood wrote: >On Mon, 7 Dec 1998, it was written: >> I copied b20.1's sh.exe to /bin/sh and cp removed the execute permissions. >> Chmod'ing the binary did not work either. So I moved /bin/sh to >> /bin/sh.exe. Autoconf runs and spits 6 lines of control chars, each >> ending with ": not found". Then it spits out >> /bin/sh.exe: 11: Syntax error: ")" unexpected. >> > >Well, I was playing with the problem again today when I accidentally >typed: sh /bin/sh.exe . And surprise, I got the same 6 lines of control >chars so could it be that sh is attempting to run itself instead of the >shell script that calls it when I try to run just ./configure or autoconf? The standard Windows permission settings do not include an execute bit. The execute bit is simulated by Cygwin. If Cygwin sees that a filename ends with .exe, it sets the execute permission bits that you see when you do a ls -l. Cygwin will also set the bits if the first two characters of a file are '#!'. I'm not sure why you're copying /bin/sh.exe to /bin/sh but it is not necessary and will only confuse things. Scripts that begin with '#!/bin/sh' behave properly under Cygwin. Adding the .exe to the /bin/sh is optional and probably should be avoided if your goal is to create portable scripts. -- cgf@cygnus.com http://www.cygnus.com/