Re: Suggestions for corrections to executable.el - use of PATHEXT

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 19:20:17 -0600 (MDT)
> From: Davis Herring <address@hidden>
> Cc: Emacs Devel <address@hidden>
> 
> If I'm going to contribute, let's do it usefully.  This is a patch against 
> the CVS `bindings.el' (where `executable-binary-suffixes' has migrated and 
> become `exec-suffixes').  I also have done my homework now and see that 
> 'cygwin is a valid `system-type', which means we don't need the ""s.

Thanks.

This is something for the Windows experts to respond; mine are just
questions and superficial comments.

First, I'm not sure we should look at PATHEXT.  That variable is AFAIK
looked at by the shell, so if we want Emacs behave _exactly_ like the
shell does, we should at least look at the value of SHELL and/or
ComSpec (and COMSPEC for older systems).  I mean, what if the user's
shell is Bash, which AFAIK doesn't look at PATHEXT at all?  And if the
shell is COMMAND.COM, then ".cmd" should not be in the list.  Etc.,
etc.

More generally, I'm not sure Emacs _should_ behave like a Windows
shell.  There's nothing wrong in expanding or improving on the shell's
functionality, especially since Windows shells are not too smart, even
on XP.  For example, ".btm" is the extension of 4DOS and 4NT
replacement shells; why shouldn't Emacs know about that, even if
PATHEXT doesn't include it?

As for Cygwin being part of the condition--do users of the
Cygwin-compiled Emacs really want to disregard Windows batch files?
If not, `cygwin' should be part of the condition.