Re: xargs prompts with the same string, but executes differently

[James Youngman]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 7:51 PM 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> OK.
> But I now "demand" that xargs add a --show-quoting or whatever argument,

Your demand must be presented in the form of a patch.


> so that --verbose, and -p, will now show
> 'xdotool' 'mousemove' '0 0' 'click' '1' 'mousemove' 'restore' ?...
> vs.
> 'xdotool' 'mousemove' '0' '0' 'click' '1' 'mousemove' 'restore' ?...
> for people who care about those details,
> else there is *no way*, using the xargs command itself, for the user to
> know what is about to come flying in his face.
>
> You can't just offer no way to distinguish the two cases, even if saying
> something in the fine print of the man page. It's not fair.
>
> "sh -x" already does this.

sh has a clear way to determine the precise semantics of the necessary
quoting style.  That is, it knows precisely what constructs contain
metacharacters or field separators that need quoting.