| shQuote {base} | R Documentation |
Quote a string to be passed to an operating system shell.
shQuote(string, type = c("sh", "csh", "cmd"))
string |
a character vector, usually of length one. |
type |
character: the type of shell. Partial matching is
supported. "cmd" refers to the Windows NT shell, and is the
default under Windows. |
The default type of quoting supported under Unix-alikes is that for
the Bourne shell sh. If the string does not contain single
quotes, we can just surround it with single quotes. Otherwise, the
string is surrounded in double quotes, which suppresses all special
meanings of metacharacters except dollar, backquote and backslash, so
these (and of course double quote) are preceded by backslash. This
type of quoting is also appropriate for ksh, zsh and
bash.
The other type of quoting is for the C-shell (csh and
tcsh). Once again, if the string does not contain single
quotes, we can just surround it with single quotes. If it does
contain single quotes, we can use double quotes provided it does not
contain dollar or backquote (and we need to escape backslash,
exclamation mark and double quote). As a last resort, we need to
split the string into pieces not containing single quotes and surround
each with single quotes, and the single quotes with double quotes.
The Windows shell supports only double quoting. All this
implementation does is to surround by double quotes and escape
internal double quotes by a backslash. As Windows path names cannot
contain double quotes, this makes shQuote safe for use with
system and with shell if the default shell
is used.
It will usually be safe to use shQuote to quote arguments of a
command, but because system does not use a shell,
interpretation of quoted arguments is done by the run-time code of the
executable.
Loukides, M. et al (2002) Unix Power Tools Third Edition. O'Reilly. Section 27.12.
http://www.mhuffman.com/notes/dos/bash_cmd.htm
Quotes for quoting R code.
sQuote for quoting English text.
test <- "abc$def`gh`i\\j"
cat(shQuote(test), "\n")
## Not run: system(paste("echo", shQuote(test)))
test <- "don't do it!"
cat(shQuote(test), "\n")
tryit <- "use the `-c' switch\nlike this"
cat(shQuote(tryit), "\n")
## Not run: system(paste("echo", shQuote(tryit)))
cat(shQuote(tryit, type="csh"), "\n")
## Windows-only example.
perlcmd <- 'print "Hello World\n";'
## Not run: shell(paste("perl -e", shQuote(perlcmd, type="cmd")))