Package: tcl8.4 Version: 8.4.9-1 The `exec' Tcl builtin command, and also `open' when used in pipeline mode, cannot pass certain arguments to commands. Any arguments starting with < or > and many starting with | & 2 will be interpreted as redirection attempts and there is no way to quote or override this behaviour.
There should be a syntax which indicates that subsequent arguments are not redirections. (This is better than a per-argument quoting arrangement because it means that pre-prepared argument lists do not need to be passed through a quoter routine.) The exercise is to allow for example what would be achieved in sh with echo ">" not a redirect >filename Possible alternatives I can think of are: exec -redirects-as-options > filename -- echo > not a redirect exec > filename <>-- echo > not a redirect but there are numerous possibilities. Just to forestall the response "don't do that then", consider for example how in Tcl one might feed a mail message to /usr/sbin/sendmail -odq -oee -oi -t -f <> ? liberator:~> tclsh8.4 % exec /usr/sbin/sendmail < filename odq -oee -oi -t -f <> couldn't read file ">": no such file or directory % Don't just focus on a workaround (for this case or in general); obviously I know that there are workarounds. But the workarounds are inconvenient particularly in the general case. I have a program where an untrusted string ought to go through an argument to an external program. Any application which wants to pass arbitrary data as arguments to external programs risks coming up against this limitation. Tcl should obviously be able to run any command that Unix itself is able to support. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
