Re: Bug: can not start a w32 GUI program from Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 13:00:06 +0100
> From: "Mathias Dahl" <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> >     (w32-shell-execute "open" ".")
> >
> > just gives "ShellExecute failed: No application is associated with the
> > specified file for this operation".
> 
> If you thought the above to work, in the same way that "start ." works
> from cmd.exe I think you simply missed that "." is "magic" only inside
> cmd.exe.

"." is magic not only for cmd.exe, it is recognized by all
file-related primitives of the Windows API.  The error message
actually tells what is wrong in this case: Windows doesn't have any
application associated with ".", so it doesn't know what application
to run for the "open" verb.  But if you try

   (w32-shell-execute nil "explorer.exe" ".")

you will see that "." _is_, in fact, supported outside cmd.exe.