Re: Ediff error -- Permission denied (Win8)

[Óscar Fuentes]

Yeşim Erke-Magent <yesim.ev@gmail.com> writes:

> It has been years I used Emacs so when I needed to compare 2 text
> files (they are VBA macros, but I saved them with .txt extension. I
> installed emacs (version 24.3.1) and used "Compare (Ediff)" under
> "Tools" menu. Then selected "Two files" and I receive
>
> "Searching for program: permission denied, diff"
>
> I then open the files and tried to compare 2 buffers, but it didn't make any 
> difference.

Do you have `diff' installed?

> I have 64-bit Win8 on my PC and emacs' directory is under Users
> directory, not Program Files. Could this be a problem?

No.

> BTW, I also installed GNU grep, but couldn't manage to run it through
> command line. I then tried using grep under Tools of emacs and it
> didn't work either.

Is `grep' on a directory listed on the PATH environment variable? How do
you obtained and installed `grep'? Same for `diff'.

Please note that under Windows you either install the executables on a
directory already listed on PATH or (better) you add to PATH the
directory where you installed the executable (when you wish to execute
that executables from other executables.)

You can set PATH from the OS Control Panel or from your .emacs. See the
documentation for `setenv' function and for `exec-path' variable.

Also, Emacs has variables for finding certain programs on user-specified
places or with special names. For grep, there is the variable
`grep-program'.