Re: [PATCH] Add shell-quasiquote.

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
> Cc: Random832 <random832@fastmail.com>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 18:37:16 +0200
> 
> I don't think package authors as a rule _ever_ bother a lot about what
> kind of shell might run their commands.  Most external utilities and
> Free Software programs of some relevance, including but not restricted
> to GNU utilities, are available on a wide variety of both UNIX-like and
> unalike systems.

I agree.

> More often than not shell-quote-argument will be used _exactly_ in order
> to save the package author from having to bother about the actual shell
> in question.  The best way to do that would be a quoting strategy that
> works on all systems, the next best autodetection, possibly with some
> optionable aid when the system in question is not necessary the local
> one (I think we had some expedient for executing helper commands like
> decompressors remotely but currently can't find anything.

The function shell-quote-argument will not go away under this
suggestion (IIUC), it will still do what it does today.  The
suggestion is to provide a few separate functions that are tailored to
specific shells, for those use cases that might need that.  One such
use case is Tramp, which must work with shells that are not
necessarily identical to the system shell of the locals OS.

> At any rate, I'm afraid that providing _separate_ shell-quote-argument
> functions will encourage people to create programs that stop working
> when tramping/communicating/ftping/whatever to a system of different
> kind.

That's a danger, yes.  We will have to consider it, and stand guard if
needed.