Incorrect Directory Path Formatting in Windows (ROOT_DIR Missing Slashes)

[marcolongol]

Description

When running the task CLI tool on Windows, the ROOT_DIR variable appears to return an incorrectly formatted path, missing the expected backslashes \.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a Taskfile.yaml with the following content:

version: '3'

tasks:
  default:
    - echo {{.ROOT_DIR}}

2. Run task from the extracted binary location:

C:\Users\WDAGUtilityAccount\Downloads\task_windows_amd64>task

Expected Behavior:

The output should correctly print the full directory path with backslashes:

C:\Users\WDAGUtilityAccount\Downloads\task_windows_amd64

Actual Behavior:

The output is missing backslashes:

C:UsersWDAGUtilityAccountDownloadstask_windows_amd64

Version

3.42.1

Operating system

Windows

Experiments Enabled

No response

Example Taskfile

version: '3'

tasks:
  default:
    - echo {{.ROOT_DIR}}

[trulede]

@marcolongol it's possible that the backslash are consumed by the echo command, you might try:

- echo "{{.ROOT_DIR}}"
- echo '{{.ROOT_DIR}}'
- echo {{shellQuote .ROOT_DIR}}
- echo {{spew .ROOT_DIR}}

to gain an insight.

[Yorherim]

rewrite

vars:
  ROOT_DIR: '$(pwd)'
  BIN_DIR: '{{.ROOT_DIR}}/bin'

[trulede]

@marcolongol internally, task has this variable as c:\\some\\path, the templating engine then produces correctly c:\some\path. Now the real problem is that the echo command now interprets those single \ as escape sequences ... so what is echoed looks wrong, but actually, its exactly as you would expect.

You need to tell echo (or any other command in the shell) how to deal with that, which luckily for you is easy. Try this:

- echo {{squote .ROOT_DIR}}

@andreynering I think that if, internally, task would store these string values with "double backslash" (i.e. c:\\\\some\\\\path) then most of the templating functions dealing with paths would fail: such as osIsAbs. So I think this is one of those problems where correct use of the shell is the only way.

It would be possible to mask the var, and double backslash the variables

vars:
  ROOT_DIR: '{{.ROOT_DIR | replace "\\" "\\\\"}}'

which yields a similar effect.

Perhaps, after a template string is expanded, it could be possible to escape any backslash in that expanded string. However, doing such a thing would prevent any escape sequences from working (e.g. \n) so I don't really think that is solving the problem.