[PATCH] Allow scp to copy files that start with a Windows drive name.

[Sam Hocevar]

On Windows, “scp C:/foo/bar remotehost:” will attempt to connect to
a remote host “C” and access file “/foo/bar”. There is currently no
syntax or flag to allow copying files that start with a drive name.

This patch changes the behaviour (only on Cygwin) by considering
that a single letter followed by a colon is a Windows drive name
and thus an absolute path. This is also more consistent with the
manual page that recommends to use absolute pathnames “to avoid
scp treating file names containing ‘:’ as host specifiers”.

It is still possible to access files on a machine “C” by using
square brackets, e.g. “scp [C]:/foo/bar remotehost:”.

There are countless user reports indicating that this behaviour
is desirable:
 - http://stackoverflow.com/q/8975798/111461
 - http://serverfault.com/q/582048/73723
 - http://superuser.com/q/291840/71253
 - https://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/371q5i
 - http://stackoverflow.com/q/21587036/111461
 - http://askubuntu.com/q/354330/12301
 - http://superuser.com/q/338075/71253
 - https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1131655.html
 - http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/transfer-files-from-linux-to-windows-pscp-4175530524/
---
 misc.c | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)

diff --git a/misc.c b/misc.c
index 9421b4d..cd10287 100644
--- a/misc.c
+++ b/misc.c
@@ -435,6 +435,10 @@ colon(char *cp)
 
 	if (*cp == ':')		/* Leading colon is part of file name. */
 		return NULL;
+#ifdef HAVE_CYGWIN
+	if (isalpha(*cp) && *(cp+1) == ':')	/* Do not split at drive name. */
+		return NULL;
+#endif
 	if (*cp == '[')
 		flag = 1;
 
-- 
2.1.4