Cygwin is not passing arguments to Windows apps

[Karl Crary]

I have stumbled on to a fix, but I am still puzzled. The problem arises
when either of the following lines appears in my /etc/fstab:

c: /c ntfs binary,noacl,cygexec,user 0 0
c: /home ntfs binary,noacl,cygexec,user 0 0

I've taken them out and it's working now, but I'm still puzzled by how
those lines created the problem. Those lines worked verbatim on my last
Cygwin installation; what changed?

Karl Crary



On Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 8:45 AM Karl Crary <crary@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Thank you, but I guess I posted a bad example then.
>
>
> latex --version
>
> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.25 (MiKTeX 23.10.12)
> (preloaded fomat=latex.fmt)
>   restricted \write18 enabled.
> **
>
>
> It should print version information, but instead that is what I would
> expect to see if I ran latex with no arguments.  The same thing happens if
> I call latex with a filename.  Or, to fix my previous example:
>
>
> $ cmd '/?'
> Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.2861]
> (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
>
> C:\crary>
>
>
> Any other thoughts?
>
> Karl Crary
>
>
>
>
> On 12/17/2023 7:29 AM, Eliot Moss wrote:
> > On 12/16/2023 10:55 PM, Karl Crary via Cygwin wrote:
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> I am encountering a bug wherein Cygwin is not passing arguments to most
> Windows programs (although Cygwin programs are doing fine).
> >>
> >> For example, the following command ought to be dumping a lot of usage
> information, but instead it starts a command prompt, which is what it does
> when not passed any argument.
> >>
> >>
> >> $ cmd /?
> >> Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22621.2715]
> >> (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
> >>
> >> C:\crary>
> >>
> >>
> >> I am experiencing the same behavior with bash, tcsh, zsh, and also
> make.  In addition to cmd, I've also confirmed that arguments are not being
> passed to wsl, explorer, and (Miktex's) latex.  Some third-party apps are
> getting their arguments, including Standard ML of New Jersey.
> >>
> >> This is a brand-new install on a brand-new Windows 11 machine.  (A Dell
> Precision 3660 tower, if that matters.)  I also tried varying the cygwin
> dll version (a little, not exhaustively) to no effect.
> >>
> >> Any theory as to what could be going on would be most appreciated.
> >>
> >> My cygcheck output (lightly redacted) follows.
> >>
> >> Karl Crary
> >
> > Cygwin's shell (generally bash) will try to pattern match ("glob") the /?
> > because of the ? .  I get intended results if I type:
> >
> > cmd '/?'
> >
> > Because what is in the root directory / may vary from system to system,
> > behavior without the quotes will may vary.
> >
> > HTH -- EM
>