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From: "DePriest, Jason R." <jrdepriest AT gmail DOT com>
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2010 11:06:22 -0500
Message-ID: <AANLkTil0pNuO4a9n2Ln5H3Q0cJRdQER7NlgSTg2a9EN2@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: 'cp' utility bug when <dest-name>.exe file exist.
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On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:42 AM,  <RISINGP1 AT nationwide DOT com> wrote:
> I disagree. =A0This seems to me to be adopting the Microsoft policy of do=
ing
> the user's thinking for them: =A0"I don't care what they want - we know
> what's best for them." =A0If a person wants to have "foo" and "foo.exe" in
> the same directory, that should be allowed. =A0A few times getting tripped
> up by the wrong thing executing will be a good life lesson for the person,
> and teach about how different operating systems work to boot. =A0Should I
> create "foo" as an executable, and "foo.exe" exists, then if I want to run
> "foo.exe", I should have to call it out specifically. =A0I can see this
> might cause some confusion should, unbeknownst to the user, "foo.exe"
> exists earlier in the path than "foo", but that would become an
> education on how to use the PATH variable. =A0This confusion arises
> from Cygwin's kowtowing to Microsoft's dubious idea of using extensions to
> control the handling of files.

If you took away Cygwin's .exe extension handling and just relied on
file permissions like Unix, then using Cygwin tools from a cmd.exe
prompt would become problematic.

Windows wants that .exe (or .bat or .cmd or .msi, etc) extension and
doesn't give a whip if you chmod a file's permissions +x.  Without an
extension, Windows has no idea what to do with the file.

That's fine if you never do anything with Cygwin commands outside of a
Cygwin shell, but I don't think this is a globally desirable
behaviour.

-Jason

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