Re: shell expansion produces e.g. "ls: cannot access '*.pdf': No such file or directory" in Windows CMD shell, but works okay in bash

[Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com>]

Is this because cygwin globbing is (by default) case sensitive? You
could set the CYGWIN environment variable to "glob:ignorecase" to get
case-insensitive behaviour.

Paul

On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 at 17:52, Jay Libove via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
>
> I've never seen this before.
> In a Windows CMD shell, Cygwin shell expansion, for example:
> ls *.pdf
>
> returns:
> ls: cannot access '*.PDF': No such file or directory
> (Indeed, any Cygwin shell expansion, when executed from within Windows CMD, produces this error. See below)
>
> ls *someotherwildcard* (that matches the same .pdf files) DOES return the expected file list.
>
> Example:
>
> C:> DIR *.pdf
> Volume in drive C is C
> Volume Serial Number is 8674-712A
>
> Directory of C:\Temp
>
> 22/03/2020  18:30         1.675.954 test.pdf
> XX/XX/XXXX  XX:XX         {Any many other .pdf files}
>
> Yet:
>
> C:> ls *.pdf
> ls: cannot access '*.pdf': No such file or directory
>
> And:
> C:> bash
> user@hostname /cygdrive/C/Temp/test
> $ ls *.pdf
> A.pdf
> B.pdf
> {etc}
>
> And, not ALL of the *.pdf files in the particular directory where I've encountered this trigger the problem...
>
> C:> ls N*.pdf
> N.pdf
>
> C:> ls A*.pdf
> ls: cannot access 'A*.pdf': No such file or directory
>
> Nor do all directories containing .pdf files produce this. Of the many thousands of files and directories that I have, only some produce this problem.
> In others, ls *.pdf works perfectly in Windows CMD.
>
> I've looked at the Windows ATTRIB and CACLS of the files in directories where this problem occurs.
> They're all the same. That is, uniform across all files and directories. Nothing interesting.
>
> It's not just 'ls':
>
> C:> cat *.pdf
> cat: '*.pdf': No such file or directory
>
> So, it appears to be Cygwin shell expansion, when executed under Windows CMD, which is provoking this strange behavior.
> Any ideas what could be causing this, and how to solve it?
>
> many thanks,
> Jay
>
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