Re: Windows-style pathname does not work as command - why?

[Eric Blake <eblake at redhat dot com>]

On 09/02/2010 11:45 AM, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> I don't quite understand this behavior:
>
> $ ls C:\\tools\\emacs-23.2\\bin\\runemacs.exe
> C:\tools\emacs-23.2\bin\runemacs.exe
> $ C:\\tools\\emacs-23.2\\bin\\runemacs.exe
> bash: C:\tools\emacs-23.2\bin\runemacs.exe: command not found
>
> In particular, why is it that bash does not understand that Windows
> pathname when it is used as a command argument, even though bash and
> Cygwin clearly understand it when it is used as a command argument?
>
>
> Is that behavior a bug (e.g., does bash try to judge whether the command
> is an absolute vs. relative pathname without either first converting to
> a Unix-style pathname or otherwise recognizing Windows-style pathname)?

You're not the first to notice this, but it's also not the highest 
priority on my list to look into, because we already recommend using 
POSIX style paths in the first place.

> Or is it some known irregularity (resulting from trying to handle both
> Windows- and Unix-style pathnames) that couldn't be resolved?

Oh, I'm sure that bash could be patched to be smarter about DOS-style 
pathnames.  But no one has been bothered by it enough to write a patch yet.

--
Eric Blake   eblake@redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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