Empty file without "x" permission is successfully executable on Cygwin

[Lavrentiev, Anton (NIH/NLM/NCBI) [C] via cygwin]

Hi,

Please consider the following shell session:

$ cat dummy.c
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    return 0;
}
$ gcc -o dummy dummy.c
$ mv dummy.exe dummy
$ ./dummy
$ echo $?
0
$ chmod a-x dummy
$ ./dummy
-bash: ./dummy: Permission denied
$ rm dummy
$ touch dummy
$ ./dummy
$ echo $?
0

So Cygwin lets the shell to execute a zero-sized file regardless of the "x" perm
(non-empty files are not executable if they do not have "x", as shown above).

Is that expected?  On Unix, an empty file can only be executed (exit code 0) if there's the "x" permission granted.

There's more.  If I put some rubbish in a file, Cygwin still tries to execute it even if the "x" is not there:

$ rm dummy
$ echo "1" > dummy
$ ./dummy
./dummy: line 1: 1: command not found

So Cygwin knows about "dummy" being a PE32 executable missing the "x" (top of my session), and properly denies the execution
when there's no "x", but still lets all other file contents execute blindly (regardless of "x").  That's very dangerous!

Thanks,
Anton Lavrentiev


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