PATH Problem and Solution

["Carey Barnett" <cbarnett at sympatico dot ca>]

Guys,

I just spend an hour or so installing XFree86/Cygwin with WindowMaker -
works great, by the way - and I discovered an oddity.  I'm certain this is a
Windows/DOS issue, but here it is:

This line in startxwin.bat can cause problems depending on the original
contents of the PATH variable:

SET PATH=.;%CYGWIN_ROOT%\bin;%CYGWIN_ROOT%\usr\X11R6\bin;%PATH%

...here's why:

Some programs insert their directory into the PATH variable using the long
file name (C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.1\bin for example), and some use
the 8.3 DOS format (C:\PROGRA~1\ULTRAE~1).  The DOS shell, when it expands
the variable, %PATH%, leaves the spaces in the name, and the SET command
thinks you've just given it an extra parameter.  The solution is to change
the base PATH in Windows to use the short, DOS 8.3 form
(C:\PROGRA~1\Java\j2re1.4.1\bin in our case).  You want to run the MSCONFIG
command to do this.

I hope this helps someone.

Carey