sed: altered results in bash and cmd

[Markus Schönhaber]

fergus wrote:
> To delete all lines beginning with a <space> in a text file, this
> command (a) seems correctly composed and (b) works:
> 
> 	sed '/^ .*$/d' filename
> 
> but if I use it in a cmd window, the result is that all lines
> _containing_ a space are deleted, not just those beginning with a space.
> 
> In general, and assuming PATHs etc correctly set, should not Cygwin
> command lines work identically in bash and cmd windows? Is this a
> problem with sed, with (my) command line syntax above, or with my
> understanding of what should work when?
> 
The difference in behaviour you are seeing results from the difference 
in the way cmd and bash interpret command lines and pass the resulting 
arguments to the specified commands.
Compare:

C:\>E:\cygwin\bin\echo.exe '/^ .*$/d'
/ .*$/d

C:\>

to:

mks ~
$ /cygdrive/e/cygwin/bin/echo.exe '/^ .*$/d'
/^ .*$/d

mks ~
$

As you can see, the '^' isn't passed to echo.exe by cmd. I'm not really 
sure but I think cmd doesn't treat single quotes as quoting characters - 
at least not in the way bash does.
If you use double quotes, it shout work in cmd:

C:\>E:\cygwin\bin\echo.exe "/^ .*$/d"
/^ .*$/d

C:\>

BTW: '/^ /d' shoud be enough to achieve what you are trying to.

Regards
   mks

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