Forward slashes in path and pipes

[Andrew DeFaria]

Dave Korn wrote:
> Andrew DeFaria wrote:
>> Found out a funny thing about Cygwin today. I've known for a while that
>> forward slashes works as well as backslashes when specifying a path to
>> execute. So all of the following work from a cmd prompt:
>>
>> C:> C:\Cygwin\bin\ls
>> C:> C:\Cygwin/bin\ls
>> C:> C:/Cygwin/bin/ls
>>
>> Also the following works:
>>
>> C:> C:\Cygwin\bin\ls | more
>>
>> However the following fails:
>>
>> C:> C:\Cygwin/bin\ls | more
>>
>> It fails with something like "C:\Cygwin\bin not found" (From memory).
>>
>> What does this have to do with Cygwin you say?
>
> Nothing. This is cmd.exe's idiosyncratic command-line parsing behaviour. 
Agreed.
> Try quoting it:
My personal solution was to change "/"'s -> "\"'s in the Perl function 
that I wrote to return the Windows oriented path to Cygwin's bin.
>
>> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>C:\Cygwin/bin\ls | more
>> 'C:\Cygwin' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
>> operable program or batch file.
>>
>> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>"C:\Cygwin/bin\ls" | more
>> Application Data
>> Cookies
>> Desktop
>> Favorites
>> Local Settings
>> My Documents
>> NTUSER.DAT
>> NetHood
>> PrintHood
>> Recent
>> SendTo
>> Start Menu
>> Templates
>> default.pls
>> ntuser.dat.LOG
>> ntuser.ini
>> schedlog.txt
>>
>>
>> C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>
> For some reason (the presence of the pipe?) cmd.exe parses the forward 
> slash as an options separator rather than a path component in one case 
> but not the other. Quoting removes the ambiguity.
Yes, my Cygwin question would be why does it store "/" in the registry 
for what is obviously a Windows path?
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
Five out of four people have trouble with fractions.


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