Bizarre Cygwin/Explorer/paths problem half-solved

Fri Aug 8 08:21:00 GMT 2008

On 4 Aug, Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
> Hi Luke,
>> > I discovered today that if I try to run Windows Explorer from 
> > the Cygwin command line, and give it a pathname with spaces, 
> > it fails, but if I give the same command line to a cmd.exe 
> > command line, Explorer works!
> > 
> > I.e. from Bash, explorer fails with an error message like 
> > "The path '/e,c:\temp\space dir' does not exist or is not a 
> > directory."
> > 
> > I've tried every quote combo I can. If I leave off the /e 
> > option then it does open the directory, but without the side 
> > pane (which is what you'd expect with the /e option omitted).
> > 
>> I've had this little gem in my .bash_profile for ages, and it's never failed
> me regardless of the craziness of the path:
>> # Easy "Explorer here" command
> x()
> {
> 	if [ "${1}" = "" ];
> 	then
> 		XPATH=".";
> 	else
> 		XPATH="$(cygpath -w "${1}")";
> 	fi
> 	explorer $XPATH & disown %-
> }
>> No tree view though. Lessee what happens if I add a "/e,":
>> # Easy "Explorer here" command with tree control on the left
> x()
> {
> 	if [ "${1}" = "" ];
> 	then
> 		# No parameter given, open Explorer in the current bash
> directory.
> 		XPATH=".";
> 	else
> 		# Open the given path.
> 		XPATH="$(cygpath -w "${1}")";
> 	fi
> 	explorer /e,$XPATH & disown %-
> }
>> ...yep, that works like a charm too.

True, and thanks, that's interesting!
Don't try this variant, though, since it doesn't work:
 explorer /e,"$XPATH" & disown %-
What happens if you try that innocuous-looking variant is that Cygwin
(or bash?) normalises the path /e,... to a windows path first, producing
\e,...
Well, I though that snippet of info interesting enough to share.
Regards,
luke
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