Re: $(shell ...) and SHELL problems in 3.81

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 16:09:39 -0400
> From: Christopher Faylor <address@hidden>
> 
> Cygwin may try to be an island of POSIX in a sea of Windows but as
> soon as you leave the island by running cmd.exe you have to expect
> trouble.  I don't have the POSIX specification handy but I'd be
> surprised of cmd.exe qualified as a POSIX shell since, AFAICT, the
> POSIX shell specification is based on the Bourne Shell which accepts
> "-c" as a command-line argument.

If -c is the problem (which I agree it probably is), then it's not
specific to cmd.exe; any program that doesn't grok -c as a shell does
will behave that way.  For example, cat or perl, even if they are
Cygwin programs.

> Above and beyond that point, however, it is not a goal of Cygwin to
> operate flawlessly with cmd.exe.

But Cygwin doesn't (AFAIK) do anything to deliberately defeat cmd.exe
more than it does with any other program.