From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-03-27T01:24:23+09:00
Subject: Re: String to array as command line

On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Daniel Harple wrote:

>
> On Mar 26, 2006, at 6:03 PM, lubomir.markovic@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I can't find a function that takes a string as an input, parses it and
>> returns an array in the exactly same way as command line is parsed into
>> ARGV array variable.
>> Could you give me a hint?
>> 
>> Thanks in advance
>> Lubos
>
> require 'shellwords'
> args = Shellwords.shellwords('foo\ bar "another shellword"') # => ["foo bar", 
> "another shellword"]
>
> -- Daniel

but that will only be similar to sh-like shells.  i think a portable way to do
it would be

   harp:~ > cat a.rb
   def command_line string
     Marshal::load(IO::popen("ruby -r yaml -e' print Marshal::dump(ARGV) ' #{ string }"){|io| io.read})
   end

   p command_line(' foo bar foobar ')
   p command_line(' "foo bar" "foobar" ')
   p command_line(' foo $bar ')
   p command_line(' foo "$bar" ')
   p command_line(" foo '$bar' ")


   harp:~ > ruby a.rb
   ["foo", "bar", "foobar"]
   ["foo bar", "foobar"]
   ["foo"]
   ["foo", ""]
   ["foo", "$bar"]

this may be overkill but it should work regardless of the shell in use.

-a
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