buildconf.bat: Fix echo for paths with special chars

[tiwoc]

If there was a closing parenthesis ")" in the path leading to the checkout, buildconf.bat exited with an error:

c:\(example)\curl\>cmd /C buildconf.bat
Generating prerequisite files
\curl\Makefile was unexpected at this time.

[tiwoc]

Just noticed that the quotes do not get stripped before printing, so we get output that looks like:

Generating prerequisite files
"* C:\(example)\curl\Makefile"
"* C:\(example)\curl\src\tool_hugehelp.c"
"* C:\(example)\curl\include\curl\curlbuild.h"

If anyone knows how to solve this, please let me know. The hacks that I found on StackOverflow made my brain hurt. Otherwise, I think it's better to have some quotes in the output than to have a broken build ;)

[captain-caveman2k]

Hi,

Thanks for the report and attempted fix.

The problem isn't the echo as such - it will work under certain circumstances such as in a brand new batch file with nothing else in it.

The problem is the if statement as it uses brackets - although I'm not too sure why.

Moving the echo outside the if or into a separate function call fixes the problem.

[jay]

+1 on the patch. It's the right parenthesis. The command interpreter expands the variables before it evaluates the if block. It's easier to understand if you boil the other stuff away

  if exist Makefile.dist (
  echo * %CD%\Makefile
  )

The interpreter expands all variables first (think preprocessor):

if exist Makefile.dist (echo * C:\(example)\Makefile )

It starts to interpret it as an if statement:

if exist Makefile.dist (echo * C:\(example)

but then chokes because the leftover isn't expected: \Makefile was unexpected at this time.

I think the best way is to wrap it in quotes, that is what I do in many of my scripts because it is the most resilient. You may see some people use delayed variable expansion, ie !CD! instead of %CD%. Though that works, if you enable delayed expansion globally you're essentially trading one problem for another, because what happens is when other variables contain exclamation points they can be corrupted because they are interpreted as delayed variables to be expanded. For example echo Foo! bar! will output Foo.

If you really don't want quotes enable delayed expansion temporarily since nested setlocal is allowed:

  setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
  if exist Makefile.dist (
  echo * !CD!\Makefile
  )
  endlocal

Of course if that block were more complicated and included variables expanded normally that contained exclamation points, their data would be corrupted (assuming you didn't do it purposely).

[captain-caveman2k]

I've pushed a fix that simply moves the echo outside of the if statement.

I don't want to enable delayed variable expansion as that relies on Windows NT and would break on legacy systems and like the author I don't like the use of quotes as they get output rather than stripped off.

An alternative fix is to move the echo and copy into it's own function and have the if call that function.