>> operator in WSL redirects to Windows path

[bkotch]

Environment

[Environment]::OSVersion

Platform ServicePack Version      VersionString
-------- ----------- -------      -------------
 Win32NT             10.0.17763.0 Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.17763.0

wsl lsb_release -r

Release:        18.04

wsl cat /proc/version

Linux version 4.4.0-17763-Microsoft ([email protected]) (gcc version 5.4.0 (GCC) ) #1217-Microsoft Mon May 05 16:09:00 PST 2020

Steps to reproduce

Run a command that pipes the output to another linux command inside Powershell
e.g.

wsl echo "test" >> ~/test.txt 
ls  ~/test.txt

ls (correctly) reads ~ as the Windows home directory. That isn't the problem. The problem is that the >> wrote to the windows directory and not the wsl user's home directory

The only way I could get this to work is by escaping the >> operators so they get interpreted by the WSL *nix appliance like so this writes the file where'd I expect.

wsl echo "test" `>`> ~/text.txt
wsl ls  ~/test.txt

I found the issue with absolute paths as well

PS C:\Users\bhatchet> wsl echo "test" >> /home/root/test.txt
out-file : Could not find a part of the path 'C:\home\root\test.txt'. 
At line:1 char:1
+ wsl echo "test" >> /home/root/test.txt
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : OpenError: (:) [Out-File], DirectoryNotFoundException 
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : FileOpenFailure,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.OutFileCommand

I get that powershell is escaping the >> commands so ~ evaluates to the windows home directory of the user and escaping works, but it gets pretty hairy pretty quickly.

Like, creating a linux user from outside wsl

wsl useradd -p `$`("openssl passwd -1 $($password)"`) $username

Expected behavior

Piping / redirecting *nix commands stay relative to *nix inside wsl execute

Actual behavior

Piping / redirecting *nix commands use windows after the redirect inside wsl execute.

[therealkenc]

This is variation #5232 (message) #5270 #3284. That ~ is not interpreted by bash (your Linux shell). For your first scenario you want:

PS> wsl.exe sh -c "echo test > ~/test.txt"

[sundhaug92]

Amend to what @therealkenc said: That ls is an alias of Get-ChildItem, it's the powershell-version (You can verify this with for example ls ~/desktop (verifying via case-insensitivity and desktop-folder existence)