Re: Synchronous file IO in Lua? Shell escaping?

[Lorenzo Donati <lorenzodonatibz@...>]

On 20/09/2022 10:44, Marvin Scholz wrote:
> On 20 Sep 2022, at 9:47, Tomas Mudrunka wrote:

[snip]

> > os.execute({"sync", "filename"});
> >
> > lua can detect that table was passed rather than string. and
> > bypass the shell in that case. That would prevent need to have 
> > shell-specific (platform-specific) escaping in lua...
>
>
> Unfortunately on Windows that is not so trivial to do:
>
> https://learn.microsoft.com/de-de/archive/blogs/twistylittlepassagesallalike/everyone-quotes-command-line-arguments-the-wrong-way

That article is really interesting. Thanks for the reference.

Command quoting for complex shell commands, especially if started from 
within another program, has always been a PITA in Windows. See for 
example how cmd.exe processes the command line for quotes (scroll down 
to mid-page):

https://ss64.com/nt/syntax-cmd.html

That's also why I grew the habit of creating file names rigorously using 
ASCII chars alone AND no spaces (using underscores instead). It's so 
ingrained in me that I subconsciously consider a space just a command 
separator and not a legal char for filenames.

That has saved me lots of grief sometimes, at the cost of being seen 
somewhat as a weirdo by colleagues with no programming background (I do 
that also with documents that don't have to be processed by tools, like 
PDF mail attachments). :-)