Re: sh module (WAS: Re: Is "scripting" truly Lua's future?)

["David Manura" <dm.lua@...>]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 1:07 AM, Norman Ramsey wrote:
> > >  A function os.quote that takes a Lua string and quotes it using
> > >  Bourne shell conventions,

The "fs" module in LuaRocks portably implements certain non-ANSI file
system commands using only shell commands (os.execute/io.popen).  It
is intentionally designed to run on a bare Lua installation (i.e.
without lposix/luafilesystem).    In particular, it uses a utility
function "Q" (a.k.a. "fs_Q") that quotes an argument for shell
processing and a function "execute" (a.k.a. "fs_execute") that quotes
a list of arguments and runs the command.  This might be made into
reusable module(s) or merged with your code.

http://luaforge.net/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/luarocks/src/luarocks/fs.lua?rev=HEAD;cvsroot=luarocks
http://luaforge.net/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/luarocks/src/luarocks/fs/unix.lua?rev=HEAD;cvsroot=luarocks
http://luaforge.net/plugins/scmcvs/cvsweb.php/luarocks/src/luarocks/fs/win32.lua?rev=HEAD;cvsroot=luarocks

This is a common need.  I recently wrote a Lua script that acted as a
proxy to another command (passing arg arguments to os.execute).  This
required consideration of the obscure quoting rules on Win32.  Ideally
this should have been abstracted in a module.