Shell quoting util

This tool was made to handle a specific edge case in shell scripting.

When you want to supply a command to some tool as a shell string, but you only have it as already expanded array.

This doesn't work as expected because $@ is expanded, ending up as multiple arguments to su:

su -c "$@"

This does work as expected:

su -c "$(sh_quote "$@")"

Because all arguments must be relayed, -h or --help cannot be taken into account, so there is no helptext.

When no arguments are given, it returns without producing any output.

Error messages

None. This program cannot fail.

If stdout is not writable, no sensible output will be generated.

If $0 is not set, no output will be generated.

Building

Run make.

Testing

Run make test

The test script can also run on arbitrary programs: ./test_sh_quote /path/to/other_program.