[Chicken-users] windows shell problem

[felix winkelmann]

Hi!

I'm trying to "fix" the mingw build and have encountered
a problem that leaves me absolutely dumbfounded.

I invoke csi and csc in chicken-install like this:

"c:\home\chicken-trunk\bin\csi" ...<args> ...

(Note the quotes around the pathname)

This works fine in cmd.exe, but fails when using the
system(3) function. The behaviour is absolutely incomprehensible
to me, as passing arguments (with or without quoting) makes
it sometimes work and sometimes not. Omitting the quotes
around the program name seems to work, but I can't say
why. There is also no documentation that I can find, which
describes the quoting rules in the windows shell, or what
system(3) is doing behind the scenes. This is mingw
on a relatively old Win XP installation, using the cmd.exe
shell.

Please help. I'm going mad. The moment when I lose control
and throw the whole windows build out of the window is
coming near...


cheers,
felix