[Bug] "Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathA" gets output when terminal opens

[Goldenlion5648]

Version Information

Cmder version: 1.3.25.328
Operating system: Windows 10

Cmder Edition

Cmder Full (with Git)

Description of the issue

when starting cmder, (in this case with 3 tabs) this shows at the top of one:

Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathA
Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathB

another one has it twice

Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathA
Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathB
Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathA
Could Not Find C:\Users\abc\AppData\Local\Temp\cmder_lib_pathB

And the third doesn't show it at all.

I saw it might be related to this, is there reason for the arbitrary path size limit? (my path is length 4000)
https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder/blob/master/vendor/lib/lib_path.cmd#L129

How to reproduce

1. Have a long path
2. close cmder with 3 tabs running
3. open cmder (the 3 tabs will get restored)
4. see the error

Additional context

No response

Checklist

• I have read the documentation.
• I have searched for similar issues and found none that describe my issue.
• I have reproduced the issue on the latest version of Cmder.
• I am certain my issues are not related to ConEmu, Clink, or other third-party tools that Cmder uses.

[leo-liar]

Hello @DRSDavidSoft,
though I'm not @Goldenlion5648 I'd like to reply. My own %PATH% recently grew beyond 3000 characters (3420 right now) and I too get, especially during the first start of Cmder, the exact same error in 2 out of 3 open Cmder tabs. Closing and restarting usually fixes this (after the second start no such error messages appear).

I'm using:

• Cmder_mini in the most recent version v1.3.25.328
• I'm using it with PortableGit (Git for Windows) v2.52.0 (rc0)
• I've manually updated clink and clink-completions to their latest versions
• I'm on Windows 11 Version 23H2 (Build 22631.6060)

---

I've also just tested with the most recent nightly build of Cmder (v1.3.25.397) and get the same error as well as an

Der Prozess kann nicht auf die Datei zugreifen, da sie von einem anderen Prozess verwendet wird.

("The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.")

Actually with the nightly build my workaround now requires multiple restarts until no more error message appears. If said error upon starting Cmder happens I now also see it sometimes twice within the same tab, exactly as Goldenlion5648 reported.

On top of that I now also see errors like this:

Der Vorgang ist bei einer Datei mit einem geöffneten Bereich, der einem Benutzer zugeordnet ist, nicht anwendbar.

("The process cannot be applied to a file with an open section that is assigned to a user.")

Seems like some kind of racing condition during startup to me.

---

Taking a look at the code Goldenlion5648 referenced, I changed my Cmder\vendor\lib\lib_path.cmd as follows:
(prepending the temp files with a string generated from %RANDOM% so every cmd process saves into its own file)

    :toolong
        set "_rand=%RANDOM%"
        echo "%OLD_PATH%">"%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathA"
        echo "%PATH%">"%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathB"
        fc /b "%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathA" "%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathB" 2>nul 1>nul
        if errorlevel 1 ( del "%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathA" & del "%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathB" & set "_rand=" & goto :changed )
        del "%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathA" & del "%temp%\%_rand%_cmder_lib_pathB" & set "_rand="
        exit /b

This seems to prevent this error.

[DRSDavidSoft]

@leo-liar Thanks for the fully detailed report!

I've applied your fix (a7c0e06), with some extra guards (e7f102b) to avoid collisions (even on random prefixes), and to clean up the temporary files.

It makes to avoid writing to the same file from the perspective of opening multiple Cmder instances at the same time, so your _rand solution makes sense to me.

Of course, this code was written by the main Cmder contributor (@daxgames), so pinging him to also hear his opinion.

In the meantime, I understand why the code is making use of temporary files in order to perform the comparison, but I would prefer if we didn't create any random files, to begin with. I'm hoping to find alternative solutions in order to minimize the temp file creation.

So far, in batch scripting, dax's approach seems to be the best (and only) approach, for comparing too long paths (or paths with special characters).

@leo-liar @Goldenlion5648 Please try the latest nightly builds (or manually update the file) to see if the solution is working as intended, also to make sure there isn't any unintended side-effects.

(Note that the nightly artifacts are available here for download.)

The %PATH% variable on my machine doesn't exceed the 3000 character limit, so I either have to test it on a VM, or better yet, add a test to the Cmder repo that would artificially increase the characters to exceed that amount, so the :toolong branch is executed and tested by our GitHub actions flow.

Thanks everyone for the contribution 🤝 , I hope I can find an alternative method, and if not, would implement the tests to avoid such a problem in the future.

[leo-liar]

@DRSDavidSoft thanks for the quick action. I just downloaded the new lib_path.cmd as well as directly copied the changed code lines but now Cmder just throws a syntax error (and fails to load e.g. my aliases).

I'm trying to find which line of code in e7f102b leads to this error.

---

There's a _rand% missing in line 138 in the second if-clause checking for existence of %_rand%_cmder_lib_pathB!
(Written there is only if exist "%temp%\%_cmder_lib_pathB".)