[Nix-dev] builtins.toString and escapeShellArg ?

[Marc Weber]

let pkgs = (import /etc/nixos/nixpkgs/pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix) {};
  a = pkgs.lib.escapeShellArg ";${pkgs.perl}";
  b = pkgs.lib.escapeShellArg ";/nix/store/foo";
in "${a} ${b}"

Str(";/nix/store/75aca8292zhnxsbm7whfcpgys1fbww3g-perl-5.10.0 \\;/nix/store/foo",["/nix/store/sgf6q7g20rh35cqbp5n31pz0s058dla3-perl-5.10.0.drv"])
    ^^^^                                                     ^^^^

I'd expect that both ; get escaped. However only the second one which is not
near by the real store path get's escaped?


implementation of escape and escapeShellArg can be found in lib/strings.nix:

  # same as vim escape function.
  # Each character contained in list is prefixed by "\"
  escape = list : string :
    lib.concatStrings (map (c: if lib.elem c list then "\\${c}" else c) (stringToCharacters string));

  # still ugly slow. But more correct now
  # [] for zsh
  escapeShellArg = lib.escape (stringToCharacters "\\ ';$`()|<>\t*[]");

Marc Weber