Git Bash for Windows expands glob patterns even when quoted

[bberstel]

• I was not able to find an open or closed issue matching what I'm seeing

Setup

• Which version of Git for Windows are you using? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

$ git --version --build-options

git version 2.19.0.windows.1
cpu: x86_64
built from commit: d96bb8bc6c636a8869140e860e72e7bdf64bd790
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8

• Which version of Windows are you running? Vista, 7, 8, 10? Is it 32-bit or 64-bit?

$ cmd.exe /c ver

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.285]

• What options did you set as part of the installation? Or did you choose the
  defaults?

# One of the following:
> type "C:\Program Files\Git\etc\install-options.txt"
> type "C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\etc\install-options.txt"
> type "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Programs\Git\etc\install-options.txt"
$ cat /etc/install-options.txt

Editor Option: Notepad++
Path Option: Cmd
SSH Option: OpenSSH
CURL Option: OpenSSL
CRLF Option: LFOnly
Bash Terminal Option: MinTTY
Performance Tweaks FSCache: Enabled
Use Credential Manager: Enabled
Enable Symlinks: Disabled
Enable Builtin Rebase: Disabled
Enable Builtin Stash: Disabled

• Any other interesting things about your environment that might be related
  to the issue you're seeing?

Nope.

Details

• Which terminal/shell are you running Git from? e.g Bash/CMD/PowerShell/other

Bash

• What commands did you run to trigger this issue? If you can provide a
  Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example
  this will help us understand the issue.

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~
$ cd tmp

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ cat > foo.java
public class foo {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		System.out.println(args.length + " args:");
		for (String arg: args) System.out.println(arg);
	}
}

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ javac foo.java

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ ll
total 9
-rw-r--r-- 1 bruno 197613 705 Oct  2 17:25 foo.class
-rw-r--r-- 1 bruno 197613 156 Oct  2 17:25 foo.java

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ java foo
0 args:

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ touch a.txt b.txt

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ java foo *.txt
2 args:
a.txt
b.txt

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ java foo "*.txt"
2 args:
a.txt
b.txt

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ java foo '*.txt'
2 args:
a.txt
b.txt

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ java foo \*.txt
2 args:
a.txt
b.txt

bruno@Oberkampf MINGW64 ~/tmp
$ java foo '*.txtd'
1 args:
*.txtd

• What did you expect to occur after running these commands?

I would expect the glob patterns NOT to be expanded when quoted. Note that "*.txt" is not expanded when passed to echo or ls, but is when passed to the small Java program (and that program is so small that it cannot be suspected that it expands the pattern).

• What actually happened instead?

The pattern was expanded, defeating the quotes around it.

• If the problem was occurring with a specific repository, can you provide the
  URL to that repository to help us with testing?

This is not dependent of a repo. Actually it seems independent from Git.

[asheiduk]

It seems this is surprising behaviour of java itself:

$ cmd
C:\>ver
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.320]
C:\> echo java *.txt
java foo *.txt

So cmd does not expand the arguments but...

C:\> java foo *.txt
2 args:
a.txt
b.txt

a java does!

This Stackoverflow Answer sheds some light onto this undocumented issue and links to further usefull stuff. Another interesting note is this comment in a bug report for Eclipse - it confirms the behaviour checking with Sysinternals Procexp.

So java on Windows tries to mimic Unix. But if a Windows-Java is started from a Unix-"emulator" ... strange things happen. But I guess that git-for-windows will not add special cases for java.

[bberstel]

Thanks for this precious info. It is indeed surprising to see the Java interpreter on Windows try to mimic Unix. And the cmd-bash comparison is useful, too.

Yet, Java under cmd honors quotes:

C:\>java foo "*.txt"
1 args:
*.txt

while (as illustrated earlier) it does not under git-bash for Windows. So I'm afraid there is still something.

[dscho]

So I'm afraid there is still something

Probably that "something" is that the quotes are passed to java when you call it in CMD, but in Git Bash, they are interpreted by the Bash!

I could imagine that java foo '"*.txt"' would work in Bash.

In any case, this ticket seems to be pretty far off from any Git bug. Therefore I'll close this ticket.