posit-dev / posit-dev/positron

Preview calls quarto without quoting the filename properly for zsh

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area: quarto enhancement support
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
1d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
206

Description

Type: Bug

I'm working in a directory that has parentheses "abc(def)" in its path. When I click "Preview" the terminal runs a command that errors:

quarto preview /<path> --no-browser --no-watch-inputs
zsh: no matches found: <path>

If in the same terminal I repeat the command but with the path quoted, it works fine.

So the issue appears to be that the path with parentheses is not properly quoted for zsh.

Quarto extension version: 1.136.0

Version: Positron 2026.08.2+4 (747dd536c5913adad71a568a57679bb2c5e5cd71, 2026-08-20T19:13:05Z)
Code - OSS version: VS Code 1.124.0
OS version: Darwin arm64 24.6.0
Modes:

System Info
Item Value
CPUs Apple M3 (8 x 2400)
GPU Status 2d_canvas: enabled
direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok
gpu_compositing: enabled
multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on
opengl: enabled_on
rasterization: enabled
raw_draw: disabled_off_ok
skia_graphite: enabled_on
trees_in_viz: disabled_off
video_decode: enabled
video_encode: enabled
webgl: enabled
webgpu: enabled
webnn: disabled_off
Load (avg) 8, 8, 7
Memory (System) 16.00GB (0.10GB free)
Process Argv
Screen Reader no
VM 0%

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No source file or test is named. Start by locating the Preview command construction in the TypeScript extension code and reproduce it with a project path containing parentheses in zsh. Done means the generated quarto preview command safely quotes the path and Preview succeeds for such paths.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript, zsh
Domain
cli, tooling
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
68/100

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