This is the mail archive of the cygwin mailing list for the Cygwin project.


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
Other format: [Raw text]

Re: The Cygwin User Guide on path names


On 8/28/2016 12:57 PM, Linda Walsh wrote:
Andrey Repin wrote:
Also, @ Linda, the string escaping is done by the shell before passing
arguments to the command, as I understand.
If I'm starting an application not from shell, the app, being a good citizen,
should not second-guess the arguments it is given.
---
	Absolutely.  Don't get me wrong.  I am NOT for removing
functionality or compatibility.  If the Winpaths work for you
in your situation, I am all for keeping them working!  No reason
to break previous compatibility needlessly.  Way too often, developers
are throwing away previous compat. because its convenient, to make
it harder for the user to maintain & control their machine.

	I usually find the forward slashes easier to use because
of the quoting issue -- as I used ls for an example.  Same would
apply to diff though.  I.e. -- in bash, if you type

  > diff C:\tmp\file1 C:\tmp\file2

But I wouldn't expect this to work, because I know the backslashes are going to
be interpreted by the shell. It's nothing to do with the application (diff in
this case). To use a command shell, you need to know what that shell does.

When using Cygwin, I use paths like C:/tmp/file1 or /cygdrive/c/tmp/file1.
Never C:\tmp\file1 (unless I'm quoting/escaping the backslashes as needed).



--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple


Index Nav: [Date Index] [Subject Index] [Author Index] [Thread Index]
Message Nav: [Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]