Re: [rdiff-backup-users] [PATCH] Support for backing up paths with trailing slashes on Windows

[Dominic]

Josh Nisly wrote:
> The problem this fixes is most evident when trying to back up an 
> entire drive e.g. C:\, but the same problem occurs whenever there is a 
> trailing slash in the path. The issue is that rdiff-backup has support 
> for using \ as a way of escaping characters in the path specifier. 
> This is all fine and common on unix, but on Windows, the \ is 
> obviously used as a path separator. (There really is no way of 
> escaping characters like this on the Windows command line. It is 
> expected that you simple quote everything.) This patch simply disables 
> escaping if the path separator is a \.
>
> This does remove some functionality: if you are backing up from 
> Windows to linux, you could have escaped the remote side of the 
> connection, and with this patch you can't. However, you can still 
> quote the remote path, and I believe that it's more important to allow 
> trailing slashes, especially with drive specifications, than 
> supporting escaping for the remote path.
>
> (This problem was first reported here: 
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2008-08/msg00051.html.) 
The patch is helpful I am sure, but a fairly simple workaround for the \ 
issue on Windows XP or higher is, if running rdiff-backup from a command 
script (.cmd or .bat), set a variable to the the path(s) and then use 
the variable character replacement capability (do SET /? for info) e.g:

C:\>echo %USERPROFILE%
C:\Documents and Settings\Dominic

C:\>echo %USERPROFILE:\=/%
C:/Documents and Settings/Dominic

By processing all paths in this way in a command script as or before 
they are passed to the rdiff-backup command line the problem should 
disappear I think. But each full path must be allocated to a variable 
for this to work (I cheated above by using a built-in system variable). 
(As it so happens in this example there is no trailing forward slash but 
you get the idea.)

Dominic