Win32::ShellQuote(3)

NAME
Win32::ShellQuote - Quote argument lists for Win32

SYNOPSIS
    use Win32::ShellQuote qw(:all);

    system quote_system('program.exe', '--switch', 'argument with spaces or other special characters');

DESCRIPTION
Quotes argument lists to be used in Win32 in several different situations.

Windows passes its arguments as a single string instead of an array as other platforms do. In almost all cases, the standard Win32 CommandLineToArgvW <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms647232.aspx> function is used to parse this string. cmd.exe has different rules for handling quoting, so extra work has to be done if it is involved. It isn't possible to consistantly create a single string that will be handled the same by cmd.exe and the stardard parsing rules.

Perl will try to detect if you need the shell by detecting shell metacharacters. The routine that checks that uses different quoting rules from both cmd.exe and the native Win32 parsing. Extra work must therefore be done to protect against this autodetection.

SUBROUTINES

  quote_native
Quotes as a string to pass directly to a program using native methods like Win32::Spawn(). This is the safest option to use if possible.

  quote_cmd
Quotes as a string to be run through cmd.exe, such as in a batch file.

  quote_system_list
Quotes as a list to be passed to system or exec. This is equally as safe as "quote_native", but you must ensure you have more than one item being quoted for the list to be usable with system.

  quote_system_string
Like "quote_system_list", but returns a single string. Some argument lists cannot be properly quoted using this function.

  quote_system
Switches between "quote_system_list" and "quote_system_string" based on the number of items quoted.

  quote_system_cmd
Quotes as a single string that will always be run with cmd.exe.

  quote_literal
Quotes a single parameter in native form.

  cmd_escape
Escapes a string to be passed untouched by cmd.exe.

CAVEATS

•   Newlines (\n or \r) and null (\0) can't be properly quoted when running through cmd.exe.

•   This module re-implements some under-specified part of the perl internals to accurately perform its work.

AUTHOR
haarg - Graham Knop (cpan:HAARG) <haarg@haarg.org>

CONTRIBUTORS

•   Mithaldu - Christian Walde (cpan:MITHALDU) <walde.christian@googlemail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (c) 2012 the "AUTHOR" and "CONTRIBUTORS" as listed above.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.