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Version 1.9 Build 1556

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misc.escapespecial - Function

	Package	utility
	Module	misc
	Tool	misc

escape characters in a string special to the shell

Synopsis
escapespecial(string)

Description
This simply replaces the characters *, #, (, ), and |, by the sequences \* - \|, respectively. This is mainly used on strings that are to be passed to the shell. In a compromise between speed and completeness, this is only a subset of all possible significant characters, but it covers the most commonly problematic cases. There is no escape mechanism to avoid the filtering. This uses the builtin regex substitution capabilities of Glish.

Arguments

string		String
		Allowed:	String

Returns
String

Example

- dms.escapespecial('abc def ghi jkl mno')
abc def ghi jkl mno 
- dms.escapespecial('a#c d*f g(i j)l m|o') 
a\#c d\*f g\(i j\)l m\|o 
-
+ files := shell('ls -1 A*foo')                                   
- files
A*foo Anotherfoo 
-
+ for (f in files) { print shell(spaste('ls -l ',f)) }                
-rw-rw-r--   1 dbriggs  visitor        5 Dec 19 18:02 A*foo 
-rw-rw-r--   1 dbriggs  visitor        4 Dec 19 18:16 Anotherfoo
-rw-rw-r--   1 dbriggs  visitor        4 Dec 19 18:16 Anotherfoo
-
+ for (f in files) { print shell(spaste('ls -l ',dms.escapespecial(f))) }
-rw-rw-r--   1 dbriggs  visitor        5 Dec 19 18:02 A*foo
-rw-rw-r--   1 dbriggs  visitor        4 Dec 19 18:16 Anotherfoo

The * in the filename, which we don't know about a priori, has confused the shell. This is cured simply by wrapping all unknown strings in dms.escapespecial() before passing them to the shell.