possible bug in process.c?

[Michael Vezie]

In process.c, in DEFUN("start-process...

Around line 1193 or so (in 21.3, although I've seen the same code in 20.7) is 
the following 
snippet of code:

  /* If program file name is not absolute, search our path for it */
  if (!IS_DIRECTORY_SEP (XSTRING (program)->data[0])
      && !(XSTRING (program)->size > 1
           && IS_DEVICE_SEP (XSTRING (program)->data[1])))
    {

...  at which point it then processes a relative pathname file (looking through 
Vexec_path
for the executable, etc).

Maybe I'm reading this wrong (help me out if I am), but shouldn't that last 
line there read:
           && !IS_DEVICE_SEP (XSTRING (program)->data[1])))
              note  ^

Here's how I read it:

If the first character is not a directory separator ('/' or '\\') and the 
string is longer than 
1 and the second character is a device separator (':')...  you're checking here 
if the string denotes 
a relative path.  But if the second character is a ':', then it's something 
like:

c:/fsf/emacs-21.3/bin/cmdproxy.exe

which is an absolute path, and doesn't require looking through Vexec_path.

In any case, I get an error preceeded by "Searching for program" when I set my 
SHELL environment 
variable to c:/fsf/emacs-21.3/bin/cmdproxy.exe (it should never search for the 
program in the path 
with an absolute path like that), and things work fine when I set my SHELL 
environment variable to 
simply cmdproxy.exe

Michael