Re: [Mingw-users] running programs from MSYS with quotes

[Yuri K. <yur...@gm...>]

If I understand you correctly, using single quotes is no better than using
double quotes here. Both commands:

$ cmd //c '"cmd" /c echo test'
$ cmd //c "\"cmd\" /c echo test"

produce the same command line:

c:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /c "\"cmd\" /c echo test"

And they doesn't do what they are supposed to do. The point here is to pass
the following command line to the process:

c:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe /c ""cmd" /c echo test"

AFAIR, some programs, amongst which are cmd, start, hstart, treat their
command line specially. When given things like `""cmd" /c echo test"`, they
just ignore the outer quotes or treat the whole thing as one big quoted
argument. So, is there a way to make it so that GetCommandLine() would
return exactly this: e:\showargv.exe ""c:\Program Files\foo" /k echo foo" ?

> MSYS sh DTRT here,automatically inserting double quotes where needed, to
keep arguments with embedded white space, or embedded special characters,
intact.

To be honest, it looks like MSYS sh has too much magic in it. Generally, I
prefer straightforward behavior and don't like when programs make up my
mind for me. Because it usually makes things more complex than they should
be. But I don't know the reasoning, so I might be evidently wrong here.

Regards,
Yuri