cygwin 1.3.20-1 - strange problems with long command lines in nt4

["Willis, Matthew" <Matthew dot Willis at CIBC dot ca>]

I've had the same problem for a couple of months (since 1.3.13 anyway);
certain long command lines just fail to work for me. I've updated to the
most recent (1.30.20-1 as of march 11) and I find the problem just got worse
for me.

If I cd to a directory with many files, I issue "ls *" and the terminal ends
up hanging, or "ls" returns with no output. I can issue "ls" without the
star; that works just fine. 

I did an experiment back in november and found that command lines longer
than 900 bytes or so would cause the command line to hang. My previous
experiments are here:

http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2002-11/msg01133.html
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2002-11/msg00316.html
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2002-11/msg00372.html

When I first installed g++-3.exe last year, it never worked for me. Its
command lines (g++-3.exe --verbose) were longer than the magic number "900"
or so bytes, and compilation would fail when cc1plus.exe was called. I could
manually type a subportion of the cc1plus command; that would work. The
g++-2.exe command worked most of the time, unless you had a makefile with
many object files. (Theory: intermediary command lines were shorter with
g++-2.exe?). I could work around the too-many-object-files issue in my
makefile by using "ar rv" to create libs, one object file at a time.

Since I updated to 1.3.20-1, I find the "magic" number of characters has
dropped to 730. More importantly, g++-2 doesn't work any more. This seems to
be similarly true for any external command with more than 730 characters.
Contrast the following:

$ echo ${PATH}${PATH}
/cygdrive/c/texmf/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/cygdrive/c/texmf/miktex/
bin:
/cygdrive/c/WINNT/system32:/cygdrive/c/WINNT:/cygdrive/c/FpAddin:/cygdrive/c
/FpA
ddinLon:/cygdrive/c/win32app/Sybase/DLL:/cygdrive/c/win32app/Sybase/BIN:/cyg
driv
e/c/FpAddin:/cygdrive/c/OptexNT/vendordll:/cygdrive/c/OptexNT/dll:/cygdrive/
c/Pr
ogram Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/Common/Tools/WinNT:/cygdrive/c/Program
Files
/Microsoft Visual Studio/Common/MSDev98/Bin:/cygdrive/c/Program
Files/Microsoft
Visual Studio/Common/Tools:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual
Studio/VC9
8/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin/cygdrive/c/texmf/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/cygd
rive
/c/texmf/miktex/bin:/cygdrive/c/WINNT/system32:/cygdrive/c/WINNT:/cygdrive/c
/FpA
ddin:/cygdrive/c/FpAddinLon:/cygdrive/c/win32app/Sybase/DLL:/cygdrive/c/win3
2app
/Sybase/BIN:/cygdrive/c/FpAddin:/cygdrive/c/OptexNT/vendordll:/cygdrive/c/Op
texN
T/dll:/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual
Studio/Common/Tools/WinNT:/cygd
rive/c/Program Files/Microsoft Visual
Studio/Common/MSDev98/Bin:/cygdrive/c/Prog
ram Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/Common/Tools:/cygdrive/c/Program
Files/Microso
ft Visual Studio/VC98/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

$ /usr/bin/echo ${PATH}${PATH}

<In the second case, nothing happens. In the past, I have also had to
manually kill a process sucking back huge cycles.>

It doesn't appear to make a difference whether I use "bash", "tcsh" or even
"cmd" as my shell.

I could probably work around this problem by manually invoking cc1plus.exe,
but this is getting less and less convenient.

I would appreciate any advice, before I wipe my installation and try
installing an old version.

Could this be a clash with some non-cygwin software, e.g. virus checkers?
Has anyone else ever seen this behavior? Can a more experienced eye have a
look at my cygcheck -s -v -r output for obvious errors?

Thank you,

- Matt Willis

Attachment: cygcheck.out
Description: Binary data

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