Subj : system.exec() and commands in double-quotes
To   : Nightfox
From : Digital Man
Date : Tue Apr 08 2025 21:54:41

  Re: system.exec() and commands in double-quotes
  By: Nightfox to Digital Man on Tue Apr 08 2025 08:52 pm

 > Hi DM,
 >
 > Background: My login matrix has a feature where it can convert a .jpg etc.
 > to a sixel using ImageMagick's conversion program.  On Windows, it's very
 > possible that the program may be installed in a directory with a space
 > (i.e., somewhere in C:\Program Files).  I was using a Windows test setup and
 > making an update to my login matrix to try to allow running that with
 > system.exec() by putting the fully-pathed executable in double-quotes.  I
 > did some debugging, adding " & pause" to the command so I could see the
 > command window, and it complained about "C:\Program" not existing - Even
 > though I put double-quotes around the fully-pathed executable, it seemed to
 > be acting like those double-quotes were removed.  I logged the command and
 > verified the double-quotes were there.
 >
 > I'm wondering if system.exec() removes double-quotes from the command it's
 > given?

No, the double-quotes won't be removed. system.exec() is just a very-thing wrapper around system():
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/reference/system-wsystem?view=msvc-170

 > I'm also wondering if the same thing would happen on Linux (I haven't tested
 > that).

Nope, shouldn't.
https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/system.3.html

 > I thought of one solution, to write the command to a batch file or shell
 > script and run that (in a directory that doesn't contain a space), but I'm
 > wondering if I could avoid that.

Did you escape the double-quotes in the JS string passed to system.exec()? I think there's something else at play here.
-- 
                                            digital man (rob)

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