179642 - Mozilla doesn't launch OS/2 CMD (REXX) helper apps correctly

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: Download & File Handling, defect)

Description

[TT]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021111
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; U; Warp 4.5; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021111

Something has changed in the way that Mozilla launches helper applications,
because none of my .cmd helper apps work any more.  If you associate a .CMD file
with a particular MIME type and then download a file of that type, the .CMD is
launched but it appears that parameters aren't being passed.  It's hard to tell
because the output functions (echo, say) don't seem to work, nor does the
'pause' command.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Associate the attached .CMD file with a MIME type, e.g. application/zip
2. Download a file of that type and let it run the .CMD file
3. Notice how a VIO window briefly appears, but the .CMD file does not pause.

Comment 1

[TT]

Attachment: Test .CMD file that displays the command-line parmaters and pauses

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Mozilla's never passed command-line parameters other than the file the app is
being run on.

Comment 3

[TT]

I have a suspicion it doesn't even do that any more.  I thought of something
that will help debug this.  I'll write a rexx script that writes the
command-line parameter to a file, and I'll see what that says.

Comment 4

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

CMD helper apps are working fine, the issue is that the PAUSE command doesn't do
anything.

I have verified that we can launch CMD files. PAUSEs are ignored. Even if you
put 20 in.

I've no idea why.

Comment 5

[TT]

I figured out the problem.  Mozilla now passes the parameter (i.e. the name of
the downloaded file) in quotation marks.  It didn't always do this.  My REXX
script wasn't expecting the quotation marks, which is why it got confused.

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Verify invalid.

We did this because originally the code to generically start an EXE was trying
to figure out where to put quotation marks based on the stuff that was passed.

This is pretty much impossible, so files with spaces in them didn't work.

The solution was to require callers of the function to put quotation marks
around filenames because they know where to put the quotes.