diff --git a/winsup/cygwin/path.cc b/winsup/cygwin/path.cc
index 0fac9076a1..c767db4f44 100644
--- a/winsup/cygwin/path.cc
+++ b/winsup/cygwin/path.cc
@@ -3452,7 +3452,7 @@ arg_heuristic_with_exclusions (char const * const arg, char const * exclusions,
     {
       /* Since we've got regex linked we should maybe switch to that, but
          running regexes for every argument could be too slow. */
-      if ( strcmp (exclusions, "*") == 0 || strstr (arg, exclusions) == arg )
+      if ( strcmp (exclusions, "*") == 0 || (strlen (exclusions) && strstr (arg, exclusions) == arg) )
         return (char*)arg;
       exclusions += strlen (exclusions) + 1;
     }