Re: protect spaces and/or globs

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 8:19 AM Ray Andrews <rayandrews@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 2021-02-10 7:47 a.m., Peter Stephenson wrote:
> >
> > No eval needed, the arguments are now exactly the correct command arguments.
> >
> If you look at this one case indeed no eval is needed, but in the
> broader context of the way all
> my functions work, the eval is unavoidable.  Or is it?  Maybe not.

Even if you do need "eval", you should still use an array.  That is, instead of

sstring="grep --color=always -i -- ${grepargs[@]}"
eval "$sstring"

use

sarray=(grep --color=always -i -- "${grepargs[@]}")
eval "${(@q)sarray}"

Using (@q) causes each individual array element to be quoted
separately.  The double quotes then expand it in the manner of
"${sarray[@]}".