Arguments parsing in cygwin executables

Corinna Vinschen corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com
Fri Jun 19 09:01:00 GMT 2015


On Jun 19 10:44, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> Hi Sasha,
> 
> On Jun 17 20:56, Sasha Unknown wrote:
> > Hello.
> > 
> > ==Preamble==
> > Some time ago I noticed that cygwin executables (e.g. bash, tar, echo
> > & so on) handle specially *, {} and some other symbols in
> > command-line, even when being invoked not from shell (e.g.
> > programmatic invocation or cmd.exe). After some googling, I found
> > CYGWIN=noglob setting, which fixed the issue. After enabling it I
> > hoped that cygwin executables will start parsing command-line in a
> > standard for Windows executables way (I am not talking about path
> > translation, only about handling special characters and splitting
> > command string into argv array).
> > 
> > ==Main==
> > It revealed that even with CYGWIN=noglob, cygwin executables parse
> > command line differently from other windows executables. (Again, I
> > underline: I'm talking about invocation from cmd.exe or programmatic
> > invocation, not invocation from bash.) Concretely, the 3rd and 4th
> > test-cases from here fail:
> > https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/17w5ykft(v=vs.85).aspx.
> > (BTW, ironically, with CYGWIN=glob only 3rd test-case fails.)
> 
> Uhm...I just tried it myself and independently of the CYGWIN=glob
> setting only the 3rd test case fails for me.  Test case 4 works fine.
> 
> > ==Questions==
> > So, questions are:
> > 1. Is this behavior intentional, or is it bug?
> 
> The differences in argv processing when called from a non-Cygwin parent
> process have been discussed a couple of times in the last years, but I
> don't think there's a consensus if that's a bug or a feature.  The 
> function hasn't seen any noticable changes since the year 2000, though,
> and any behavioral change *might* introduce backward incompatibilities
> with existing scripts...
> 
> > 1a. If intentional: Maybe there is a way to force cygwin executables
> > to perform command-line parsing in windows-canonical way (i.e.
> > CommandLineToArgv-like)? (I am talking about splitting command string
> > into argv array, not about path translation.)
> > 2. In any case, could you point me to part of cygwin sources which is
> > responsible for this? (In case of intentionality -- to understand what
> > behavior I'm now forced to adopt to, in case of bug -- to possibly aid
> > fixing.)
> 
> https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=newlib-cygwin.git;a=blob;f=winsup/cygwin/dcrt0.cc;h=738860d0ea92ef575755b9e1752a5c53c3ccaa97;hb=HEAD
> 
> Look for function build_argv.
> 
> If you're willing to take a stab at it to fix the aforementioned
> test case 3, I'm willing to include it.  As for how to contribute,
> see https://cygwin.com/contrib.html
> 
> Just two points:
> 
> - If the patch changes more than 10 lines, we need a copyright
>   assignment.  See https://cygwin.com/contrib.html, there's a standard
>   copyright assignment form you can simply send as signed PDF by mail to
>   the address given therein.
> 
> - Please make sure to implement it so that we can switch back to the old
>   behaviour by checking some global bool variable ("bool old_argv" or so).
>   I'll then help adding the required code to allow doing that via the
>   CYGWIN environment variable for the (hopefully) rare cases which
>   require the old behaviour.
> 
> > BTW, in CYGWIN=glob mode, curly braces are handled wrongly
> > (c:\cygwin\echo.exe {aa} should return {aa}, not aa; because no , or
> > .. inside {}).
> 
> I don't think so.  GLOB_BRACE globbing is meant to do brance globbing
> just as csh does.  This doesn't require a comma or anything else within
> the braces.  Try this in tcsh or even bash.  The underlying code is

No, not in bash.  I see what you mean.  Bash handles that differently
than [t]csh.  However, csh is the obvious role model for this behaviour,
so if I had to choose who's right and who's wrong, csh (and thus the
glob original BSD code) is the clear winner.

> (almost) stock FreeBSD code, btw.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen                  Please, send mails regarding Cygwin to
Cygwin Maintainer                 cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Red Hat
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