Sisyphus wrote:
> Indeed I do .... problems like this always arise from the "other" change
> that one has made (ie the change that one has forgotten about :-)
>
> In my case that other change was to add MSYS\bin to the current shell's path
> a few days ago. Apparently I'm still running that same (cmd.exe) shell.
>
> The MSYS shell's version of rmdir expects forward slashes as path
> separators, and knows nothing about the S and Q switches. So it's not
> surprising that it thinks that /S and /Q are directories.
>
> I'm still puzzled by that backslash-escape issue, however:
>
> D:\pscrpt>type try.pl
>
> use warnings;
> $z1 = "hello\tworld";
The \t above becomes a tab (0x09) in $z1.
> print $z1, "\n";
> $z2 = "hello\\tworld";
The \\ above becomes a \ in $z2.
> print $z2, "\n";
> system("rmdir $z2");
>
> D:\pscrpt>perl try.pl
> hello world
See the tab in the above line ?
> hello\tworld
And the single \ above.
> rmdir: `hello\\tworld': No such file or directory
Here we have a strange conversion of the file name.
Firstly, we have an acute instead of a single quote (much like
in the Perl man pages - which I never understood). And second,
the \ has been converted to \\. I assume this is what your second
version of rmdir puts out for some reason.
cmd.exe would output "The system cannot find the path specified.".
And called from the Perl script, I get:
rmdir: hello\tworld: No such file or directory
See below.
cmd.exe output :
hello world
hello\tworld
rmdir: hello\tworld: No such file or directory
tcsh.exe output (guess why I always use / instead of \) :
hello world
hello\tworld
<rmdir-path>\rmdir: hellotworld: No such file or directory
> D:\pscrpt>
>
> (That's still using the MSYS/bin/rmdir.exe.)
>
> I *think* I understand. When print() receives the argument $z2, it receives
> "hello\\tworld" - and it's the print() function that decides that the first
> backslash escapes the second.
Not true - the \\ was already converted to \ in $z2.
> When rmdir receives the argument $z2, it also
> receives "hello\\tworld", but it doesn't recognize the backslash as an
> escape and treats it literally. Is that right ?
Not true, the \\ was already converted in $z2 to \.
> Up until now, I've always thought that when print() receives the argument
> $z2, it actually receives "hello\tworld" as its argument and prints
> (literally) that. I guess that assumption is (and always was) wrong.
That assumption was correct.
> If that
> assumption were correct, then we'd have to accept that the $z2 that print()
> receives is different to the $z2 that rmdir receives - and I find it
> difficult to reconcile such a difference.
That logic doesn't follow. It's your screwed up rmdir that's confusing you. ;)
--
,-/- __ _ _ $Bill Luebkert Mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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