CLI behaves differently on Windows (doesn't work) than on Linux

[sandrosc]

A friend and I found this bug when the prettier command worked on his Mac, but not on my Windows laptop.

If I use the Linux subsystem for Windows prettier works:

C:\git\core>yarn lint
yarn run v1.3.2
$ prettier 'lib/**/*.ts' 'spec/**/*.js' --write && tslint -c tslint.json 'lib/**/*.ts'
[error] No matching files. Patterns tried: 'lib/**/*.ts' 'spec/**/*.js' !**/node_modules/** !./node_modules/**
error Command failed with exit code 2.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.

C:\git\core>bash
sandro@R:/mnt/c/git/core$ yarn lint
yarn run v1.3.2
$ prettier 'lib/**/*.ts' 'spec/**/*.js' --write && tslint -c tslint.json 'lib/**/*.ts'
lib/blackbox/getRandomValues.ts 594ms
[...]
Done in 4.20s.
sandro@R:/mnt/c/git/core$

[j-f1]

Does running

C:\git\core>prettier 'lib\**\*.ts' 'spec\**\*.js' --write

work for you?

[alexander-akait]

@j-f1
!**/node_modules/** !./node_modules/**

Without quotes?

[j-f1]

I think those are the built-in ignores. It doesn’t matter that they’re not quoted since they aren’t parsed by the shell AFAIK.

[sandrosc]

@j-f1 no, following output:

C:\git\tichu-core>yarn lint
yarn run v1.3.2
$ prettier 'lib\**\*.ts' 'spec\**\*.js' --write && tslint -c tslint.json 'lib/**/*.ts'
[error] No matching files. Patterns tried: 'lib\**\*.ts' 'spec\**\*.js' !**/node_modules/** !./node_modules/**
error Command failed with exit code 2.

edit for clarity, tried the command directly instead of editing the package.json:

C:\git\tichu-core>prettier 'lib\**\*.ts' 'spec\**\*.js' --write
No matching files. Patterns tried: 'lib\**\*.ts' 'spec\**\*.js' !**/node_modules/** !./node_modules/**

[MarkTiedemann]

Single quotes don't identify strings in Windows cmd.exe.

A common mistake is git commit -m 'Initial commit', which will be interpreted as two words: "'initial" and "commit'", thus ruining your commit message in this example.

So, to make prettier work on Windows and Unix systems well, just use double quotes. :)

You must escape the double quotes in your package.json script, however:

{
  "scripts": {
  ‎  "format": "prettier --write \"lib/**/*.ts\""
  ‎}
}

Hope this helps!

[sandrosc]

Thank you very much, @MarkTiedemann!
Replacing ' with \" indeed solved my problem.

[j-f1]

@sandrosc Can we close this then?

[sandrosc]

Perhaps this would be worth documenting over at https://prettier.io/docs/en/cli.html?

[sandrosc]

@j-f1 yes, this issue can be closed. Thanks for the help!