vim temporary files with native vim on windows

Question

When running a native compilation of gVim under Win7 I have the following in my vimrc:

if has ("win32")
  let $TMP="C:/tmp"
  setlocal equalprg=tidy\ --output-xhtml\ y\ -utf8\ --wrap-attributes\ 1\ --vertical-space\ 1\ --indent\ auto\ --wrap\ 0\ --show-body-only\ auto\ --preserve-entities\ 1\ -q\ -f\ shellpipe=2>
endif

This should create a temp file. However, after running the command, I see:

shell returned 1

E485: Can't read file C:\tmp\VIoC935.tmp

The common recommendation for native windows E485 errors is to set the tmp variable, which I have, as you can see from my vimrc snippet. If I remove the let statement, I get a similar result:

shell returned 1

E485: Can't read file C:\Users\ksk\AppData\Local\Temp\VIfFA01.tmp

In both cases; both directories exist and gVim can write a file to those locations, i.e.,

:w C:\Users\ksk\AppData\Local\Temp\VIfFA01.tmp

in the current buffer will write this file without error.

Interestingly, while writing this, I found that if I create a new buffer, and delete the original buffer, the equalprg function runs without error (with and without the "let" statement in vimrc)

Answer 1

This doesn't apply to the original question, but I ran into the same symptoms because of the setting of my SHELL variable within gvim. I was launching gvim from a Cygwin window, and it picked up the SHELL setting from within cygwin: /bin/bash. I had to do a ":set SHELL=C:/cygwin/bin/bash" from within gvim, and then the temporary file problem went away. So check the setting of your SHELL variable within gVim (via ":set shell") when trying to troubleshoot this kind of problem.