Re: Quote file name args to start-process-shell-command?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Cc: lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:45:43 +0200
>> 
>> Clearly, ARGS is (except on VMS) _not_ a list of separate arguments,
>> but rather strings pasted together with spaces.
>
> Yes, as any API to `system' should do.

start-process-shell-command is neither documented as an API to
`system', nor implemented by using `system'.

>> So I don't understand how to apply your remark
>> "start-process-shell-command is not system(3).".
>
> That remark should be understood as follows:
> start-process-shell-command is a wrapper around `system',

No, it isn't.  It does something similar, but the similarity to what
`system' does is not documented, and `system' is not used in its
implementation.

> but it isn't `system' itself.  So it doesn't need to accept only one
> string, but eventually it will concatenate them all.

Even if did use `system' (which it doesn't), any behavior that arises
as a consequence of undocumentated implementation details of
`start-process-shell-command' would need to get documented.

> Apologies for being unclear.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum