[ruby-core:109146] [Ruby master Bug#18896] Shellwords.escape(nil) returns "empty" string

Issue #18896 has been updated by Dan0042 (Daniel DeLorme).


`Shellwords.escape` just converts the argument to a string before shell-escaping it, so in this context nil is equivalent to ""

```
Shellwords.escape("")        #=> "''"
Shellwords.escape(42)        #=> "42"
Shellwords.escape(Objct.new) #=> "\\#\\<Object:0x00007f01ae28c3a8\\>"
```
 At this point, changing the API in such a backward-incompatible way would cause more problems than benefit.

----------------------------------------
Bug #18896: Shellwords.escape(nil) returns "empty" string
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18896#change-98286

* Author: hspem (Per-Erik Martin)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* ruby -v: ruby 3.1.2p20 (2022-04-12 revision 4491bb740a) [powerpc-aix7.1.0]
* Backport: 2.7: UNKNOWN, 3.0: UNKNOWN, 3.1: UNKNOWN
----------------------------------------
Mistakenly calling Shellwords.escape with nil as parameter had this result:
``` ruby
irb(main):002:0> Shellwords.escape(nil)
=> "''"
```

This is not helpful and resulted a hard-to-find bug when a script proceeded to use an empty string where it shouldn't be possible. nil is not a string and escape should raise an exception instead.
Shellwords version:
``` shell
# gem list shellwords

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

shellwords (default: 0.1.0)
# 
```




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