Bug in quote-stripping for ACL and CCL in ASDF:RUN-SHELL-COMMAND

[Robert P. Goldman]

ASDF mistakenly strips out quotes nested inside shell command strings in RUN-SHELL-COMMAND. The following three examples make this clear:

1. ACL with embedded double-quotes:

CL-USER(3): (let ((asdf::*verbose-out* *standard-output*))
             (asdf:run-shell-command "echo \"Writing to standard output.\""))
; $ echo "Writing to standard output."

; Writing

0

[looks like we also add an extra newline in ASDF-MESSAGE, but that's not a huge problem...]

2. By comparison, embedded single quotes work properly:

CL-USER(2): (let ((asdf::*verbose-out* *standard-output*))
             (asdf:run-shell-command "echo 'Writing to standard output.'"))
; $ echo 'Writing to standard output.'

; Writing to standard output.

0

3. And embedded double quotes work properly on SBCL:

CL-USER(1): (let ((asdf::*verbose-out* *standard-output*))
             (asdf:run-shell-command "echo \"Writing to standard output.\""))
; $ echo "Writing to standard output."
Writing to standard output.
0

[interestingly, no extra newlines in here, either]

[Robert P. Goldman (rpgoldman)]

I have just verified that CCL has the same problem, which is not surprising, since on CCL as well as ACL, the command is passed as a separate argument, using -c, to the shell.

[Faré (fahree)]

In 2.017.11, I fixed this issue for ACL on Unix.

On Windows, the situation is quite desperate for either ACL or CCL, unless there's a complete rewrite or run-program. I disrecommend using asdf:run-shell-command on Windows, or in any program that aims to be portable beyond a Unix environment (including cygwin).

In 2.017.11, I declare asdf:run-shell-command obsolete, and I recommend the only alternative I know that is portable to all ASDF-supported implementations and operating systems including Windows (excluding Genera), xcvb-driver:run-program/process-output-stream (that happen to have written).

I'm marking this bug as "fixed", since it is probably as fixed as it ever will be (see recent discussion on asdf-devel). Please reopen or open a new bug if you consider the situation not acceptable.

[Faré (fahree)]

Was released in 2.018