Odd, is it not? mkdir 'e:\' cannot be undone by rmdir 'e:\' ...

[Houder]

On Wed, 28 Aug 2019 08:33:05, Eric Blake  wrote:

> On 8/27/19 7:51 AM, Houder wrote:
> 
>
> > 64-@@ mkdir 'e:\' # creates subdirectory e: !!!!!
> 
> Had you typed:
> 
> mkdir 'e:/'
> 
> I would expect subdirectory ./e: to  be created.  But with 'e:\', that
> is a DOS style path, so I would lean towards requiring './e:\' if you
> want to create a literal directory named 'e:\', but without the leading
> ./ to merely treat 'e:\' as the drive letter and failing with EEXIST
> because /cygdrive/e already exists.
> 
> So it sounds like mkdir() could be further improved when something ends
> in \ rather than in /.  (The behavior when ending in / should not be
> changed, though).
> 
> > 64-@@ rmdir 'e:\' # fails, because it refers to /drv/e
> > rmdir: failed to remove 'e:\': Directory not empty
> 
> That matches what I would expect - because you did not pass a leading
> './', but used a backslash, you used a DOS style path and should be
> attempting to act on /cygdrive/e.
> 
>
> > 64-@@ rmdir 'e:'
> 
> This, however, is not a DOS path, so it should prefer to act on './e:'
> if that exists (and only if it does not exist, then we might consider
> ALSO seeing if /cygdrive/e exists before giving up completely).
> 
>
> > Yes, I should NOT use "DOS paths" ...
>
> > https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#pathnames-win32
>
> > However, I wonder why e:\ is interpreted by mkdir as e:, and as
> > /drv/e (that is as e:\) by rmdir.
> 
> mkdir 'e:/' is supposed to be identical to mkdir 'e:'.  The problem is
> that because we interchange \ with / in a number of places, we have
> accidentally ended up with mkdir 'e:\' behaving like mkdir 'e:/' instead
> of acting on the DOS path.

# note: cygdrive has been remapped to /drv at my place

Good gracious! (btw, thank you for the explanation)

 - 'e:\' is a DOS path
 - e:/ is not a DOS path (removing the trailing /, yields e:)

However, ls -ld e:/ refers to /drv/e
(e:/ is interpreted as 'e:\' by ls!)

So do rmdir, stat, touch ... (and many other commands)

They are all wrong ... Correct?

How about e:/foo ????? A DOS path? Does it refer to /drv/e/foo?

According to

    https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#pathnames-win32

it is a DOS path (and NOT foo in subdirectory e:)

Said differently, e: is a subdirectory, and e:/ is the same thing,
because a trailing forward slash is ignored (like Linux does).

Correct?


Henri


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