PATH vs. Path (was: Re: Savannah W32 patches... are any OK?

[Alessandro Vesely]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 11:25:21 +0100
> > From: Alessandro Vesely <address@hidden>
> > CC: address@hidden
> > [...]
> > I added the example about the PATH vs. Path environment variable because
> > it may concern the malfunctioning of the $(shell) function in Win9x.
> 
> Problems with PATH indeed affect Make, so we should solve them.  But
> the solution could be specific to PATH, not something general for all
> environment variables.

Yes, I agree 100%.

I haven't been able to find out the reason why on
Wed Oct  1 15:45:09 1997  Rob Tulloh <address@hidden>

        * main.c [WINDOWS32]: Any arbitrary spelling of Path can be
        detected. Make will ensure that the special spelling `Path' is
        inserted into the environment when the path variable is propagated
        within itself and to make's children.

At that time it was common belief that "the practical effect, and the presumed
reason for Microsoft's inclusion of [lower case in env var names], is that the
two key Windows system variables are write-protected against tampering."
http://groups.google.it/groups?selm=8vj30d%244efo7%241%40ID-55970.news.dfncis.de

I don't think GNU make needs to prevent the user from setting tha PATH. Being 
based
on Unix's `trust the programmer' school of thought, GNU make would never do 
that.
In addition, AFAICR, NT and case-preserving env vars were already there at the 
time.

My feeling is that make would work more smoothly setting just PATH. However,
I presume that there is a specific problem that has been solved introducing the
different spelling. Hence we should not just remove it.

Any ideas?