This module manipulates strings according to the word parsing rules of the UNIX Bourne shell.
The shellwords() function was originally a port of shellwords.pl, but modified to conform to the Shell & Utilities volume of the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition [1].
You can use Shellwords
to parse a string into a Bourne shell friendly Array
.
require 'shellwords' argv = Shellwords.split('three blind "mice"') argv #=> ["three", "blind", "mice"]
Once you've required Shellwords
, you can use the split alias String#shellsplit
.
argv = "see how they run".shellsplit argv #=> ["see", "how", "they", "run"]
They treat quotes as special characters, so an unmatched quote will cause an ArgumentError.
argv = "they all ran after the farmer's wife".shellsplit #=> ArgumentError: Unmatched quote: ...
Shellwords
also provides methods that do the opposite. Shellwords.escape
, or its alias, String#shellescape
, escapes shell metacharacters in a string for use in a command line.
filename = "special's.txt" system("cat -- #{filename.shellescape}") # runs "cat -- special\\'s.txt"
Note the '–'. Without it, cat(1) will treat the following argument as a command line option if it starts with '-'. It is guaranteed that Shellwords.escape
converts a string to a form that a Bourne shell will parse back to the original string, but it is the programmer's responsibility to make sure that passing an arbitrary argument to a command does no harm.
Shellwords
also comes with a core extension for Array
, Array#shelljoin
.
dir = "Funny GIFs" argv = %W[ls -lta -- #{dir}] system(argv.shelljoin + " | less") # runs "ls -lta -- Funny\\ GIFs | less"
You can use this method to build a complete command line out of an array of arguments.
Wakou Aoyama
Akinori MUSHA <knu@iDaemons.org>
Akinori MUSHA <knu@iDaemons.org> (current maintainer)
1: IEEE Std 1003.1-2008, 2016 Edition, the Shell & Utilities volume