ruby / ruby/shellwords

Equals sign seems unnecessarily escaped

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Dominant language
Ruby
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

In rubygems, we sometimes print quite complicated commands when building extensions fail, so that the user can try to rerun things and reproduce the problem. I noticed that equal signs are escaped, making things a bit more overwhelming.

I think there might be a reason for it that I don't know of, or some shell where it's necessary, but I checked the equivalent python package, and it does not escape them, so maybe it can be changed.

➜  ~ python -c 'import shlex; print(shlex.join(["FOO=BAR", "baz"]))'
FOO=BAR baz
➜  ~ ruby -rshellwords -e 'puts Shellwords.join(["FOO=BAR", "bar"])'
FOO\=BAR baz

If the change is accepted, I can work on it.

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
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Research direction

Start at the Shellwords.join entry point shown in the issue and trace how command words containing equal signs are escaped. Check the existing shell-safety behavior before deciding whether the output can match the Python example, then verify that equal signs are handled as intended without regressing other escaping cases.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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