Re: Slashes (Re: PATH vs. Path ([Fwd: Returned mail: see transcript fordetails]

[Alessandro Vesely]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > > cmd.exe will work with / if you quote the argument.
> > >
> > > C:\>dir "c:/Software Center/Common Files"

That example demonstrates that quotes are also useful for whitespace.


> [snip]
> >
> > Command chokes happily:
> >   D:\tmp\TOOLS>dir "C:/CYGWIN/ETC/X11/FS"
> 
> On what version of Windows?  I tried on Windows 9x, and found that
> quoted arguments with forward slashes do work with command.com there.

I run that test on win98SE and it listed the current C: directory.
I guess it considers /CYGWIN /ETC as options and it doesn't complain
because of the quotes.

I also get

  C:\>"c:/util/gmake" -v
  Comando o nome file non valido

To recap:
When writing windows makefiles, one should definitely use forward slashes.
One then my need to _arrange_ filenames, that is, substitute slashes or
quote filenames. Two cases come to mind:

It is sometimes necessary to arrange command arguments. This only happens
with ugly utilities, so can it be acceptable?

Additionally, one has to arrange command names, but only if they involve
shell characters, e.g. pipes. This is tricky, so I tend to consider it
hardly acceptable.

Perhaps make might arrange commands when it doesn't have a unixy shell and
detects shell characters? I see no simple way to do this for both cmd.exe
and command.com (cmd.exe also accepts && and || as command separators.)