nushell: Glob expansion should not happen for external commands when quoted

Describe the bug

Currently it’s impossible to pass a glob-like string to an external command, as nushell expands globs even when quoted.

Some commands like the UI testing framework cypress allow passing in filter globs, I believe jest offers similar arguments.

How to reproduce

> npx run cypress --spec "cypress/integration/**/*"

(or any external command that takes a glob string)

Expected behavior

Expected:

npx run cypress "--spec" "cypress/integration/**/*"

Actual:

npx run cypress "--spec" "<file1>" "<file2>" "<file3>" "<etc>"

Screenshots

No response

Configuration

| key                | value                                    |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------- |
| version            | 0.59.0                                   |
| branch             | main                                     |
| short_commit       | 3c62d27c                                 |
| commit_hash        | 3c62d27c280dd7a7ba276760c239bfaa1b5080cd |
| commit_date        | 2022-02-24 19:02:28 +00:00               |
| build_os           | macos-x86_64                             |
| rust_version       | rustc 1.58.1 (db9d1b20b 2022-01-20)      |
| rust_channel       | stable-x86_64-apple-darwin               |
| cargo_version      | cargo 1.58.0 (f01b232bc 2022-01-19)      |
| pkg_version        | 0.59.0                                   |
| build_time         | 2022-02-24 12:20:29 -08:00               |
| build_rust_channel | release                                  |
| features           | default, which                           |
| installed_plugins  |                                          |

Additional context

Single quotes, double quotes, or unquoted all result in the same

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 2 years ago
Reactions: 1
Comments: 16 (10 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

FWIW, POSIX sh meets all of those requirements with somewhat awkward syntax:

A glob that expands automatically: *.toml
A glob looking thing that doesn’t expand automatically: "*.toml"
A path with a space and a glob that expands automatically: "my files/"*".toml"
A path with a space and a glob that doesn’t expand automatically: "my files/*.toml"

uasi on Mar 27, 2022

I see. Certainly a quandry. Could we offer single quotes or backticks as alternatives - or perhaps something similar to the $"" syntax to indicate an escaped string? I’m curious how windows-based shells like powershell or cygwin do escaping for regexes - \ is a pretty standard escape character across several platforms so I’d be surprised there isn’t a windows work-around to avoid pathname collisions.

I’m wary of any nushell-specific glob syntax given that external commands generally require a POSIX or Bash-style format, not to mention other regex parameters that include * but if we can figure out a decent quoting mechanism for indicating “leave this string alone” that would be great.

lukexor on Feb 25, 2022

I agree there but do we need to reinvent the wheel? quoting things is generally how you say “use this as-is” - even google search uses quotes for exact match

lukexor on Feb 24, 2022

@lukexor - thinking about this for a minute - currently using quotes is how we allow you to get to filepaths that have spaces in them. I wonder if we need a way of saying “do not expand this string”

sophiajt on Feb 24, 2022