[python-win32] does pipes.quote() work properly on Windows?

[Bill Janssen]

Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com> wrote:

> Bill Janssen wrote:
> > Anyone know if the quote() function in the "pipes" module does the right
> > thing for cmd.exe pipes?
> >   
> 
> No, it doesn't.  It uses sh rules, which aren't the same.
> 
> > If not, what is the right thing?
> 
> Unfortunately, command line parsing in Windows is not centralized in the
> shell.  To satisfy cmd.exe, you can safely surround each file name in
> double quotes.  Whether the application knows how to handle that or not
> is up to the application (although most do it correctly).  Remember that
> this is only necessary when passing names to the command shell.  The
> Windows APIs don't want the quotes.

I'm actually not passing file names.  I'm passing argument strings,
which may contain spaces, quotes, and other things.  For instance,

   myprogram --title="That's the game! says Mike "Hammer" Brotsky" --file=...

"myprogram" is a Python program, and expects to get the whole "--title"
argument as a single element of sys.argv.

On Unix, I use

   arg = "--title=%s" % pipes.quote(title)

to achieve that effect.  What's the equivalent on Windows?  Since
cmd.exe also supports pipelines, I'd sort of expect it to do the right
thing on Windows, too.

Bill