Command line processing in dcrt0.cc does not match Microsoft parsing rules
Stephen Provine via cygwin
cygwin@cygwin.com
Fri Aug 30 19:31:00 GMT 2019
The standard rules for Microsoft command line processing are documented here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/17w5ykft(v=vs.85)
The Cygwin code for command line processing is in dcrt0.cc, function build_argv.
The behaviors do not match. For instance, given a test.sh script like this:
#!/bin/bash
echo $1
And the following invocation of bash.exe from a Windows command prompt:
bash.exe test.sh foo\"bar
The result is:
foo\bar
When the expected result is:
foo"bar
As a workaround, you can achieve the expected result using:
bash.exe test.sh "foo\"bar"
Which is great until you use a language like Go to shell exec the command line, and don't have control over how the command line string is generated from an original set of arguments. See:
https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/syscall/exec_windows.go#L86
Go just reverses the Microsoft standard rules in the most efficient manner possible, but those command lines don't parse correctly in Cygwin processes.
Go implements a pretty definitive command line parsing algorithm as a replacement for the CommandLineToArgv function in shell32.dll:
https://github.com/golang/go/commit/39c8d2b7faed06b0e91a1ad7906231f53aab45d1
The behavior here is based on a detailed analysis of what command line parsing "should" be in Windows:
http://daviddeley.com/autohotkey/parameters/parameters.htm#WINARGV
It would be very nice if Cygwin followed the same procedure at startup.
Thanks,
Stephen
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