cygpath -w converts relative paths to absolute windows paths

[Roger Qiu]

Hi Andrey,

That was probably true in the past, but no longer!

I just tested this: `mklink /D testlink "..\All Users"` in cmd and then 
I went to Cygwin ZSH, and ran `ll`.

This showed me: `testlink -> '../All Users'/`.

Up one directory relative links do work on Windows! This is a directory 
symbolic link, which is superior to directory junctions.

Regardless of directory junction support (which I didn't test), I think 
`cygpath` should give the right results, when I don't specify an 
absolute path, I really mean give me the windows version of the relative 
path.

Now maybe there's some backwards compatibility issues, then perhaps a 
flag that can be set to mean `--really-relative`.

Thanks,

Roger

On 8/02/2017 2:30 AM, Andrey Repin wrote:
> Greetings, Roger Qiu!
>
>> Hi,
>> I've found that `cygpath --windows '../` will give back an absolute
>> windows path.
>> I thought this would only happen if you provide the `--absolute` flag,
>> or when the path is a special cygwin path.
> ".." is a special path, that can't be safely converted.
> In all cases, using absolute path is preferred for many reasons.
>
>> But this occurs just for normal directories.
>> I have come across a situation where I need to convert ntfs symlinks to
>> unix symlinks and back. Sometimes these symlinks have relative paths
>> them. Now by using cygpath --windows, I get back absolute paths, which
>> means the integrity of the symlink isn't preserved.
>> Can `cygpath --windows '../directory'` give back `..\directory` for
>> paths aren't special cygwin paths? These relative backslashes are
>> supported in Windows right now.
> AFAIK, Windows do not support relative junction points.
>
>

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