Ill throw in my two cents. I don't want to overwrite an existing file accidentally. Ie if I ls > foo and that writes to foo.exe I would be frustrated. This hasn't happened to me yet so it might not be to big of a problem. It seems a bit odd that the behavior would change if there is a file in the directory of a different name.
Preferable I would like cp foo bar, to create a file "bar" without an extension as opposed to overwriting "bar.exe". Anyway its good to have heard about this. mbs On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 12:22 -0400, risin...@nationwide.com wrote: > >> I disagree. This seems to me to be adopting the Microsoft policy of > doing > >> the user's thinking for them: "I don't care what they want - we know > >> what's best for them." If a person wants to have "foo" and "foo.exe" > in > >> the same directory, that should be allowed. A few times getting > tripped > >> up by the wrong thing executing will be a good life lesson for the > person, > >> and teach about how different operating systems work to boot. Should I > >> create "foo" as an executable, and "foo.exe" exists, then if I want to > run > >> "foo.exe", I should have to call it out specifically. I can see this > >> might cause some confusion should, unbeknownst to the user, "foo.exe" > >> exists earlier in the path than "foo", but that would become an > >> education on how to use the PATH variable. This confusion arises > >> from Cygwin's kowtowing to Microsoft's dubious idea of using extensions > to > >> control the handling of files. > > > >If you took away Cygwin's .exe extension handling and just relied on > >file permissions like Unix, then using Cygwin tools from a cmd.exe > >prompt would become problematic. > > > >Windows wants that .exe (or .bat or .cmd or .msi, etc) extension and > >doesn't give a whip if you chmod a file's permissions +x. Without an > >extension, Windows has no idea what to do with the file. > > > >That's fine if you never do anything with Cygwin commands outside of a > >Cygwin shell, but I don't think this is a globally desirable > >behaviour. > > > > Just a question: > > Shouldn't it be up to the user to determine how a file is to be used, and > name the file accordingly? > > If the file is to used only in a Cygwin environment, leave the extension > off is desired. > > If the file is to used in both a Cygwin and a Windows environment, add an > extension (like ".sh" or ".exe" or whatever is needed). It is easy enough > to teach Windows how to recognize what to do with a new extension (like > ".sh"). > > I am just against operating systems making decisions for the user, or > restricting him/her unnecessarily. And, yes, I know that this happens > all the time... > > Phil Rising risin...@nationwide.com > > -- > Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html > FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ > Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html > Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple > -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple