wslpath fails to convert Windows wsl network path to WSL path

[mangelozzi]

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19041.329]
WSL2, Ubuntu, lsb_release -r:
Release:        20.04
Linux version 4.19.104-microsoft-standard (oe-user@oe-host) (gcc version 8.2.0 (GCC)) #1 SMP Wed Feb 19 06:37:35 UTC 2020

Intro

I made a script to open a file from explorer.exe in WSL with vim. It work works fine. However sometimes I am browser within a WSL folder in explorer.exe (i.e. within \\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\), and wish to open a file in WSL with vim, then wslpath does not render a wsl path.

Steps to reproduce

michael@DESKTOP-9BB5J32:~$ wslpath "\\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\michael\foo.txt"
wslpath: \wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\michael\foo.txt

Expected behavior

/home/michael/foo.txt

Actual behavior

wslpath: \wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\michael\foo.txt

[therealkenc]

You need single quotes ref #5250. I did find however that only one of my distros (focal2 below) is converting while the rest (for example Ubuntu-18.04) does not.

[mangelozzi]

Its working for me:

michael@DESKTOP-9BB5J32:~$ wslpath '\\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\michael\foo bar.txt'
/home/michael/foo bar.txt

It doesnt escape the spaces, and having to manually change double quotes from the ones windows automatically creates to single quotes is clunky, but at least its doable.

[therealkenc]

Thanks; glad it is working for you. Dropping the bug tag. If someone else hits wslpath difficulties like I did in the screencap it can be filed under a new cover.

[benhillis]

@therealkenc - that behavior is expected if you are running wslpath from within the focal2 distro. That distro does not have access to the Ubuntu 18.04 filesystem, but agreed the error message could be more clear.