Open www links without protocol

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Right-click a link that starts with www, not http
2. Click open (first option)

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I expect to see it opened in a browser client, like it works with the http 
protocol.
What I get is a ~20 second halt and this error message:
"A device attached to the system is not functioning."

What versions of mintty, Cygwin/MSYS, and Windows are you using?
mintty 1.1.1, Cygwin 1.7.15-1, Windows 7 64bit

Please provide any additional information below.
This occured with mintty 1.0.3 as well, but with a different error text.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by adrianlund on 10 Jul 2012 at 5:17

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Mintty simply passes the string to Windows' ShellExecute() function, which 
performs the appropriate action on the file/address. A string like 
"www.foo.com" would be handled as a filename, and I actually do get "The system 
cannot find the file specified" as the error message.

There was no change here between 1.0.3 and 1.1.1. What was the address you were 
trying to open? Maybe it contained a Windows device name or something.

Special handling for "www" addresses without protocol could be added though. 
"ftp" too, I guess. Any others?

Original comment by andy.koppe on 16 Jul 2012 at 12:45

• Changed title: Open www links without protocol
• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Difficulty-Easy, Priority-Low, Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

[GoogleCodeExporter]

See https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues for further progress on this issue.

Original comment by towom...@googlemail.com on 7 Aug 2015 at 1:25