Just adding double quotes is not enough, not even on Windows. How to you pass a double quote as argument to the invoked program (system('/usr/local/bin/foo','-bar','"','-baz','""'))? You need some kind of escaping, and that becomes more and more ugly while the distance to a classic unix /bin/sh grows. I've heard that cmd.exe uses the ^ for some escaping, while command.com just does not have any escaping at all.

Adding double quotes also is not safe on Unix-like systems, as it does not disable shell interpolation, so you probably want to use single quotes there, or better: Use system(@ARGS).

I agree that system(@ARGS) on Windows should emulate system(@ARGS) on Unix-like systems, preferably by not messing with cmd.exe/command.com at all. Unfortunately, the Windows API does not offer a way to pass more than a single string to an invoked program, and splitting that string into C's argv is left to the application (or its runtime library). Avoiding command.com/cmd.exe is only the first step.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

In reply to Re^3: Construct command portable way by afoken
in thread Construct command portable way by avinash_d

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