RE: why does command echo \\\foobar print \\foobar

[Mark Galeck (CW)]

Well OK, please do.  But, is there any chance you can tell me, on Windows, 
using GNU make, and using either Windows echo or Cygwin echo (I can't predict 
which, some people have Cygwin installed some don't and I can't control that, I 
have to support either way),

how do I reliably echo so that it echoes " \\foobar"

by "reliably" I mean, that it is guaranteed to work now and later with future 
revisions of Gnu make?



-----Original Message-----
From: Eli Zaretskii [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010 11:44 AM
To: Mark Galeck (CW)
Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden
Subject: Re: why does command echo \\\foobar print \\foobar

> From: "Mark Galeck (CW)" <address@hidden>
> CC: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>, "address@hidden" <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 10:52:58 -0800
> Accept-Language: en-US
> acceptlanguage: en-US
> 
> echo \\\foobar
> CreateProcess(C:\Tools\cygwin\bin\echo.exe,echo \\foobar,...)

Obviously, Make removes one of the 3 backslashes, before it invokes
echo.exe.

I will try to look into this some day.  But this area is so delicate,
what with all the shells it supports, that I'd hesitate to change
anything unless I see a clear bug.