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. Try
quoting it:
> 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.
cheers,
DaveK
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