On 9/5/2020 12:57 PM, Greg Borbonus wrote:
Yeah, thought the expansion might be causing the issue.

Thanks,
Greg Borbonus

On Sat, Sep 5, 2020, 10:44 AM Eliot Moss <m...@cs.umass.edu 
<mailto:m...@cs.umass.edu>> wrote:

    On 9/5/2020 11:29 AM, Greg Borbonus via Cygwin wrote:
      > Out of curiosity, why are there 2 different sets of quotes?
      >
      > Thanks,
      > Greg Borbonus
      >
      > On Fri, Sep 4, 2020, 10:23 PM Bob McGowan via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com
    <mailto:cygwin@cygwin.com>>
      > wrote:
      >
      >> I am trying to set things up so the Bash profile detects if bash is
      >> running from the Windows "XWin Server" startup link or not. The startup
      >> link has the following as the command:
      >>
      >> C:\cygwin64\bin\run.exe --quote /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c "cd; exec
      >> /usr/bin/startxwin"
      >>
      >> So I thought I'd try adding the env command to set an environment 
variable:
      >>
      >> C:\cygwin64\bin\run.exe --quote /usr/bin/env startxwin=yes
      >> /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c "cd; exec /usr/bin/startxwin"
      >>
      >> This works (if there's a better way, I'd be happy to learn of it) but 
in
      >> the process of testing I had a problem when echo'ing the variable.
      >>
      >> For purposes of describing the bug, I simplified the command as 
follows:
      >>
      >>       env startup=yes bash -l -c 'echo "cmd:  $startup"'
      >>
      >> I also added an "echo profile: $startup" to the .bash_profile file.
      >>
      >> When I run the above in a Cygwin shell, the output is:
      >>
      >> $ env startup=yes bash -l -c "echo cmd: $startup"
      >> profile: yes
      >> $
      >>
      >> When I run it in a Linux shell, the output is:
      >>
      >> $ env startup=yes bash -l -c 'echo "cmd:  $startup"'
      >> profile: yes
      >> cmd:  yes
      >> $
      >>
      >> As you can see, the Cygwin side fails to generate any output from the 
-c
      >> echo command but on the Linux system there is output.
      >>
      >> Normally I'd call this a bug but since this is running under Windows it
      >> may be some weirdness of the implementation required to create the 
Linux
      >> like environment.
      >>
      >> The Bash version in Cygwin is  4.4.12(3)-release and for my Debian 
Linux
      >> system, it is 5.0.3(1)-release.  So it could also be that it existed in
      >> Linux 4.x series and has been fixed in the 5.x series.

    The inner quotes are necessary because there are two spaces beween cmd: and
    $startup, and the : may be risky unquoted in bash (actually it is ok, but I
    try to be careful about anything not a letter or digit, etc.).  The outer 
ones
    are single quotes, which protect $startup from being expanded before it gets
    to the new bash.  " " (double) quotes do not prevent $ expansion.  (You want
    the new bash to do the expansion.)  However, I think this would also work:

          env startup=yes bash -l -c echo 'cmd:  $startup'

Please put responses at the bottom ("Don't top post") on this list.

I wasn't saying the quotes were a problem, only explaining to a correspondent why they might be necessary, etc.

EM
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