The problem is with command line parameters. Because the default escape character of the command line parser is the backslash, I had to double up every directory divider backslash in every Windows path specified. The Unix paths were fine because they use the forward slash as god originally intended.
The georges didn’t like this because they couldn’t write out their semi-useful scripts properly. This is something they aren’t supposed to do anyway, since we have an automated and dedicated web-page that handles all of that for them. Still, for the purposes of testing, they wanted to be able to enter proper UNC paths without having the remember to double up the slashes.
It finally occurred to me … just change the escape character.
BOOM. All fixed, and a pat on the head for fixing something the group had been perplexed by for over a year.
“Simple. You just change the gravitational constant of the universe.”
- John Delancy as Q (Star Trek: the Next Generation)