rsync and cygwin paths

[Lapo Luchini]

(cc to cygwin at cygwin.com so that people that knows ebtter what i'm 
talking about can eventually correct me)
jw schultz wrote:

>Perhaps that is the document he needs.  If not could you
>cygwinese, cygwinites, cygwinists, cygwinim or whatever
>point him to one that will clear up the slash/backslash
>issues that still haven't been addressed.  Rsync does not
>recognise backslashes as such in exclude patterns.  Path
>components are expected to be delimited by slashes ("/")
>only.  I expect the cygwin library translates as necessary.
>
Basically if you want to be sure about what you mean you better never 
use "\".

I think the "actual state" is: cygwin's open() tries to do its best to 
open also "path with \" but most of the times there are 'problems' (that 
are, of course, no 'problems' but its meant that way) in the code of the 
app. itself that "block \" thinking they are "shell escapes" or anyway 
invalid paths... so that only a few application can be really used with 
"windows paths".
Avoiding them completely is the safest choiche.

Please notice that there is a default prgoramm called "cygpath" that's 
really useful to convert path- and file-names between the two version, 
and it's not so hard to create "wrapper scripts" to convert them, e.g. 
(I copied this long ago from I-don't-remember-where):

http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using-utils.html#CYGPATH

NEWARGS=""
for arg in $@ ;
do
  if [ -e "${arg}" ]; then
    NEWARGS="${NEWARGS} `cygpath -p -w "$arg"`"
  else
    NEWARGS="${NEWARGS} $arg"
  fi
done

-- 
Lapo 'Raist' Luchini
lapo at lapo.it (PGP & X.509 keys available)
http://www.lapo.it (ICQ UIN: 529796)