Re: Problem with win32 version

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 21:43:51 +0100
> From: Stepan Kasal <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 10:19:43PM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > I think the Windows port also removes the quotes, if only "double"
> > quotes are used.
> > 
> > (The DJGPP library used to produce the DJGPP port of Gawk supports
> > both 'single' and "double" quote characters, but most other
> > DOS/Windows libraries only support "double" quotes.)
> 
> IIRC, the double quotes were supported by command.com, and are probably
> also supported by cmd.exe.  But I vaguelly recall there were some problems,
> so I hesitate to recommend it.

That might be true, but in this case it's irrelevant: since Windows
programs don't count on the shell for command-line wildcard expansion
and quotes processing, they (the Windows programs) get the raw command
line and do the processing into the argv[] array on their own.  That
processing is part of the runtime library that is used to link Gawk.
It is these library routines where the removal of quotes happens and
where quoted strings are put into a single argv[] element.  And that's
where "double" quotes are supported, but 'single' quotes typically
aren't (except in the DJGPP library).