bash adds dot to $PATH (was: Re: $PATH contains dot but unclear where it comes from)

[Eliot Moss]

If it is of any use, the versions I have installed,
bash/sh 4.1.10(4), have the same length and differ
in two byte positions, by one bit in each case.

These differences may just reflect the different
name or a slightly different time at which the .exe
was constructed as part of a build process.  I suspect
that bash is acting differently based on the name via
which it was called and that the executable is really
the same in both cases.  On a true linux system they
might be the same file, accessed via a hard link.

The behavioral difference presumably could be traced
down in the source code to bash.  I have no idea how hard
or subtle that may be.  It might be a question that
upstream maintainers could answer.  I suppose it could
still be some kind of very subtle interaction between
bash/sh and cygwin, but you'd need to narrow down to
particular library or system calls.

I can't recall if you have tried using strace to trace
system calls of the two invocations to see if you can
find a difference there.  I am not sure what you would
look for or if it would even show up in a syscall trace ...

Regards -- Eliot

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