bug#7793: inconsistent behavior of exec-path

[Sam Steingold]

suppose you have two directories (A&B) which contain two different
executables with the same name (N).
e.g., find.exe(N) in both "c:/gnu/gnuwin32/bin"(A) and "c:/WINDOWS/system32"(B).
if A follows B in $PATH, then M-x shell-command will call A/N for N
even if I manually swap A & B in exec-path.
So far so good.

However, if I run rgrep in "emacs -q", it fails because by default B
is before A in PATH and exec-path;
while if I push A to the beginning of exec-path before the first
invocation of rgrep, rgrep will find and use the good N.

this inconsistency is bad and together with bugs
http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=6784
and
http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=7785
is causing me much grief in my first encounter with windows in 4 years.
thanks.

-- 
Sam Steingold <http://sds.podval.org>