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Re: $PATH contains dot but unclear where it comes from


Greetings, Larry Hall (Cygwin)!

> It's certainly possible that there is a pathological case where the Windows
> path isn't handled properly because of size, content, or other unforeseen
> case.

I can offer one idea of where this problem could originate from, which is in
no way pathological (i mean, in code, but comes from brain pathology of the
person introduced this problem into settings).
Windows PATH variable is constructed from two parts upon loading of user
profile.
First part is a system PATH in /proc/registry/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session\ Manager/Environment/PATH
The other part is a user's PATH in /proc/registry/HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Environment/PATH
Both parts are, by no surprise, concatenated by semicolon.
Now, if some brain-dead programmer set an installation routine to append
"some\path;" to the end of either variable, you will get an empty element in
the path. Either "..;;..." or "...;".

> But if there is a problem like this in Cygwin, we certainly need the
> specifics to show us all the problem.  That's not to say that if this issue
> tickles someone enough, they shouldn't investigate it more in an attempt
> to get to the bottom of it.  But absent that, I think it makes sense to let
> Robert show us that this is definitely some Cygwin-specific problem which
> could bite anyone with the same conditions.  At that point, it's definitely
> something worth talking about more.
So far, I'm not convinced that issue is Cygwin-specific. The fact that it
doesn't manifest in Windows is actually because of it's (windows) native
ignorance for this matter.


--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon@yandex.ru) 20.02.2014, <02:14>

Sorry for my terrible english...


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