From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>
Message-ID: <3CF7E56E.4998FF02@null.net>
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References: <036e52b3039408cb6ebbc113c03a8c65@plan9.escet.urjc.es>, <20020530190313.U22942@cackle.proxima.alt.za>
Subject: Re: [9fans] spaces in file/dir names? (and acme)?
Date: Wed,  5 Jun 2002 09:55:14 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: a5863c92-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

Lucio De Re wrote:
> ... I suppose the word delimiter on the command line could have
> been something less convenient...

That just changes the symptoms.
For fully general processing of "arguments" in the presence of
special-character handling, some form of "escape" is necessary
to prevent unwanted special-character handling.  However, that
in general also requires use of an additional special character.
Just one character can suffice to escape a whole raft of s.c.s.
It helps immensely if different apps that might be used in
conjunction employ *different* escapes (and s.c.s); if you have
ever seen a Unix shell script generating a troff macro, with
perhaps 16 \s in a row needed to get it to collapse to one \ at
the stage where it is needed, you can appreciate the problem.