RE: Problems with echo. (echo period)

[Dave Korn]

On 23 April 2007 23:02, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> From: "Dave Korn" <address@hidden>
>> Cc: <address@hidden>,
>>      <address@hidden>
>> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:22:40 +0100
>> 
>>> I don't think "echo." is a shell builtin.  It is a peculiar feature of
>>> the cmd.exe command parser.
>> 
>>   This is a semantic quibble.
> 
> You are, of course, entitled to think so.  But your thinking so
> doesn't yet make it so.

  No, it doesn't; the fact that no external executable is invoked and the
entire functionality is supplied by a subroutine within cmd.exe, on the other
hand, /does/ make it so; there is no other reasonable interpretation of the
words "a shell builtin" that I can imagine, have I overlooked something?  You
can insist that the builtin is called "echo" and that the period is an
ephemeral addition, a separate token, but the point remains that make attempts
to invoke the slow path for shell builtins, and what the command line
specifies should occur here is the invocation of a shell builtin, and make
fails to identify it as such a case and fails to take the slow path and fails
to cause the shell builtin, however you may name it, to be invoked.

  In any case, we are in agreement that it's not worth attempting to emulate
the general weirdness of cmd.exe parsing, so the argument is entirely
academic.  Your turn!

    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....