bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows

bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows

[Xah Lee]

when using emacs on Windows, when in dired, when i press Z on a file that's 
gzip compressed, emacs tells me:
'gunzip' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

the problem is apparently that emacs won't recognize the gunzip shell script 
without the exe suffix. (the gunzip is in the same dir as gzip.exe) But if i 
rename gunzip to gunzip.exe, but Windows complain that the file is not a exe 
format.

extra detail:

when i do
(executable-find "gzip")
emacs says
"c:/cygwin/bin/gzip.exe"

and
(executable-find "gunzip")
says
nil.

the gunzip exists at
c:/cygwin/bin/gunzip
which is a shell script that calls gzip -d.

Same problem when starting emacs with -Q.

GNU Emacs 23.1.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.0.6002) of 2009-07-29 on SOFT-MJASON

---------

I'm reporting this as a bug, but tips on solving this on my machine also 
would be appreciated. Thank you.

I'm thinking, shouldn't emacs's dired simply look for gzip and call it with 
gzip -d, instead of looking for the gunzip program? That seems to me simpler 
and more reliable.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄ 

bug#4867: marked as done (23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows)

[Emacs bug Tracking System]

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Your message dated Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:55:37 +0200
with message-id <83iqdoby3a.fsf@gnu.org>
and subject line Re: bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows
has caused the Emacs bug report #4867,
regarding 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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From: "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org>
To: <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
Subject: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 08:56:09 -0800
Message-ID: <39D68B7CFFBC482AA1F57C354FD0E2AE@xahPC>

when using emacs on Windows, when in dired, when i press Z on a file that's 
gzip compressed, emacs tells me:
'gunzip' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

the problem is apparently that emacs won't recognize the gunzip shell script 
without the exe suffix. (the gunzip is in the same dir as gzip.exe) But if i 
rename gunzip to gunzip.exe, but Windows complain that the file is not a exe 
format.

extra detail:

when i do
(executable-find "gzip")
emacs says
"c:/cygwin/bin/gzip.exe"

and
(executable-find "gunzip")
says
nil.

the gunzip exists at
c:/cygwin/bin/gunzip
which is a shell script that calls gzip -d.

Same problem when starting emacs with -Q.

GNU Emacs 23.1.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.0.6002) of 2009-07-29 on SOFT-MJASON

---------

I'm reporting this as a bug, but tips on solving this on my machine also 
would be appreciated. Thank you.

I'm thinking, shouldn't emacs's dired simply look for gzip and call it with 
gzip -d, instead of looking for the gunzip program? That seems to me simpler 
and more reliable.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄ 




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From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Xah Lee <xah@xahlee.org>, 4867-done@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com
Subject: Re: bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:55:37 +0200
Message-ID: <83iqdoby3a.fsf@gnu.org>

> From: "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org>
> Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 08:56:09 -0800
> Cc: 
> 
> when using emacs on Windows, when in dired, when i press Z on a file that's 
> gzip compressed, emacs tells me:
> 'gunzip' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
> 
> the problem is apparently that emacs won't recognize the gunzip shell script 
> without the exe suffix.

No, this error message comes from the OS, not from Emacs.  Windows
does not support invocation of Unixy shell scripts, and thus Emacs,
being a native Windows program that uses Windows APIs, cannot run
them.

To make this work, create a Windows batch file unzip.bat which invokes
gzip.exe with the -d switch.  Then Emacs will find it and do what you
want.

I'm closing this bug.

bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org>
> Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:25:14 -0800
> 
> Found a solution. Create a file name gunzip.bat, with this content:
> 
> @echo off
> gzip -d %1

It's better to change the last line to

  gzip -d %*

because then you will be able to give more than one argument to this
batch file.  E.g., if you want to pass additional switches or unpack
several files.

> I think this should still considered a bug though. Considering it as a 
> Windows OS problem isn't very helpful in solving this. I'm sure if similar 
> problems happen in linux that's OS issue, people probably will not look at 
> it as “Oh, it's OS issue, emacs doesn't need to deal with it”.

If you try the same with a Windows batch file on GNU/Linux, Emacs will
barf there as well.  Emacs behave according to the rules of the host
OS, so you cannot expect it to be able to run alien executables from
some other OS that the host does not recognize as executables and
doesn't know how to run.

Anyway, why do you have gunzip as a shell script?  I looked at a
native Windows port and on a GNU/Linux box, and they both have gunzip
as a first-class binary executable program.

bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows

[Xah Lee]

> It's better to change the last line to
>
>  gzip -d %*
>
> because then you will be able to give more than one argument to this
> batch file.  E.g., if you want to pass additional switches or unpack
> several files.

Thanks for the tip. I followed your advice on my machine.

> Anyway, why do you have gunzip as a shell script?  I looked at a
> native Windows port and on a GNU/Linux box, and they both have gunzip
> as a first-class binary executable program.

Cygwin and msys both use a shell script for some reason.

 Xah

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>
To: "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org>
Cc: <4867@emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: bug#4867: 23.1; dired cannot find gunzip with Z; Windows


>> From: "Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org>
>> Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:25:14 -0800
>>
>> Found a solution. Create a file name gunzip.bat, with this content:
>>
>> @echo off
>> gzip -d %1
>
> It's better to change the last line to
>
>  gzip -d %*
>
> because then you will be able to give more than one argument to this
> batch file.  E.g., if you want to pass additional switches or unpack
> several files.
>
>> I think this should still considered a bug though. Considering it as a
>> Windows OS problem isn't very helpful in solving this. I'm sure if 
>> similar
>> problems happen in linux that's OS issue, people probably will not look 
>> at
>> it as “Oh, it's OS issue, emacs doesn't need to deal with it”.
>
> If you try the same with a Windows batch file on GNU/Linux, Emacs will
> barf there as well.  Emacs behave according to the rules of the host
> OS, so you cannot expect it to be able to run alien executables from
> some other OS that the host does not recognize as executables and
> doesn't know how to run.
>
> Anyway, why do you have gunzip as a shell script?  I looked at a
> native Windows port and on a GNU/Linux box, and they both have gunzip
> as a first-class binary executable program.