likely stupid question but name conflicts with foo and foo.exe?

Larry Hall (Cygwin) reply-to-list-only-lh@cygwin.com
Wed Sep 8 15:25:00 GMT 2010


On 9/8/2010 7:32 AM, mike marchywka wrote:
> On 9/8/10, Corinna Vinschen<>  wrote:
>> On Sep  7 09:00, mike marchywka wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> I'm trying to copy of bunch of files from debian over to windoze using scp
>>> -r.
>>> This was working fine except for one error where it complains foo is
>>> not a directory
>>> and apparently I have foo and foo.exe in one dir but foo is a directory.
>>
>> This is by design.  foo.exe is recognized as foo to allow to start apps
>> without the dreaded suffix.  Since Cygwin 1.7.0, foo and foo.exe are
>> treated as identical.  You can't have a dir "foo" and a file "foo" in
>> the same directory, and that extends to "foo", "foo.exe", and "foo.lnk",
>> the latter only if it's a Cygwin symlink of the shortcut type.
>
> Well, I think my original problem was foo.exe and a directory foo both in
> same dir. I guess there could be issues with case too - foo and Foo. But, you
> did make a conscious design decision to treat exe special?

Yep.  If foo != foo.exe then users have to type foo.exe to run foo, which
is contrary to the conventions of Unix/Linux.  Worse, all scripts that
reference foo won't run because only foo.exe exists on Windows (for
historical reasons).

> This wouldn't be an absurd naming convention in real life however, app the
> dir and app.exe that uses it.

As long as they aren't in the same directory, then that's fine.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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