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I have an old fortran executable foo.exe that requires interactive input.

If I call foo.exe from Cywin I am prompted for the interactive input and the program works fine.

If I call foo.exe from WSL I am prompted for interactive input and the program works fine.


I would like to run a script or send input to foo.exe such that I don't need to go through the process of entering everything interactively.

In Cygwin I do the following:

foo.exe << EOI
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1
Test
Out
EOI

Everything works great!

I attempt to do the same thing in WSL and I get the following error message:

forrtl: An attempt was made to move the file pointer before the beginning of the file.
forrtl: severe (39): error during read, unit -4, file CONIN$
Image              PC        Routine            Line        Source
libifcorert.dll    1003A159  Unknown               Unknown  Unknown

So I grabbed the original file foo.f and I attempted to recompile it using gfortran

gfortran foo.f -o new_foo.exe

I then attempt to interactively call new_foo.exe from Cygwin and I get the following:

bash: ./newfoo.exe: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

So what used to work in Cygwin no longer does.

I then attempt to interactively call new_foo.exe from WSL and it works fine.

I can now run a script or send input to new_foo.exe using WSL and it works fine (couldn't do that before) but I have lost the ability to do it on Cygwin. One step forward, two steps back??

I then thought maybe I should recompiling it using 32-bit:

gfortran -m32 foo.f -o new_foo_32.exe

This 32-bit compiled program doesn't work with Cygwin or WSL giving the following error on both:

bash: ./newfoo.exe: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

The ultimate goal is to have a single foo.exe program that runs interactively on both Cygwin & WSL (my original code does this) AND allows me to pipe/send input on both Cygwin & WSL (my original code only allows me to do this in Cygwin).

Any suggestions?

==============
Cygwin Version

CYGWIN_NT-10.0-WOW 
<computer> 2.4.1(0.293/5/3) 
2016-01-24 11:24 i686 Cygwin

==============
WSL version

Linux <computer> 4.4.0-18362-Microsoft 
#476-Microsoft Fri Nov 01 16:53:00 PST 2019 
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
Release:        20.04
Codename:       focal
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1 Answer 1

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I'm thinking that the .exe that is generated under Cygwin has some dependencies on Cygwin, right? At least as far as stdin pipe processing goes, apparently.

I'm curious what happens if you do this in PowerShell:

@"
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"@ | foo.exe

I'm hoping (at least for getting you on the right track) that it will cause the same error that you see in WSL.

What about (in WSL):

/mnt/C/cygwin/bin/bash.exe -c "foo.exe" << EOI
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Test
Out
EOI

As for the other way around, in WSL the compiler should be generating a Linux ELF binary which isn't really an .exe. Cygwin is likely attempting to launch it as a Windows .exe, when it isn't.

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4
  • Disclaimer: A bit out of my depth here, and it's been too long since I've used Cygwin. This is an attempt at an answer that I would have put in a comment, but it needs the extra space and formatting. Let me know if this is totally off base, and I'll delete the answer if so. Commented Mar 22, 2021 at 21:12
  • Thanks so much for the response. I went into PowerShell and ran the code like suggested and got the same error as I do on WSL. Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 10:13
  • I also attempted /mnt/c/Apps/cygwin/bin/bash.exe -c "./foo.exe" << EOI within WSL and got the same error as before. Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 10:16
  • How about sending the same lines to Cygwin less.exe from PowerShell and WSL? Commented Mar 23, 2021 at 18:59

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