Emacs bug report logs - #4406
23.1; eshell quoting problem with -exec rm {} \;

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Message #5 received at submit <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com (full text, mbox):

From: "Xah Lee" <xah <at> xahlee.org>
To: <bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org>
Subject: 23.1; eshell quoting problem with -exec rm {} \;
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:59:30 -0700

this is probably a bug.

when running eshell in Windows, i do

c:\Users\xah\web>find -name "*el" -exec rm {} \;
find -name "*el" -exec rm {} \;
find: missing argument to `-exec'

it turns out, one needs to quote the ending semicolon.

This does not work:
find -name "*el" -exec rm {} \\;

This works:
find -name "*el" -exec rm {} ';'

It appears to me, this seems to be a bug, since
-exec rm {} \;
is a standard idiom in bash, and no reason that shouldn't work.

(Pascal J Bourguignon gave the correct solution. This issue is discussed a 
bit at gnu.emacs.help here
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_frm/thread/46eb4e95fcbc1fb9? )

 Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄ 

Message #10 received at 4406 <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Xah Lee <xah <at> xahlee.org>, 4406 <at> emacsbugs.donarmstrong.com
Subject: Re: bug#4406: 23.1; eshell quoting problem with -exec rm {} \;
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:30:39 +0300

> From: "Xah Lee" <xah <at> xahlee.org>
> Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:59:30 -0700
> Cc: 
> 
> c:\Users\xah\web>find -name "*el" -exec rm {} \;
> find -name "*el" -exec rm {} \;
> find: missing argument to `-exec'
> 
> it turns out, one needs to quote the ending semicolon.
> 
> This does not work:
> find -name "*el" -exec rm {} \\;
> 
> This works:
> find -name "*el" -exec rm {} ';'
> 
> It appears to me, this seems to be a bug, since
> -exec rm {} \;
> is a standard idiom in bash, and no reason that shouldn't work.

Eshell is not Bash, and on Windows, it treats the backslash as a
directory separator (unlike Bash).

So I think this is not a bug, just a platform-specific behavior that
needs to be learned.

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