Escaping commands for shipit.remote/local

[timkelty]

I recently had an issue with a shipit.remote command with a $ in it:

mysql -u'xxx' -p'xxx$xx' -h'127.0.0.1' -D db_production

For this to work properly, the $ needs to be escaped (-p'xxx\$xx' ).

What is the best way to deal with this?

Is this something that shipit.remote/ssh-pool should do, or should I have to make sure my strings are escaped before I pass them to shipit.remote?

[gregberge]

@timkelty hmm it should be done in the project, we already do it for quotes

[timkelty]

After a bit more investigating, the problem is actually related to quotes.

In my example, mysql -u'xxx' -p'xxx$xx' -h'127.0.0.1' works fine on the server, because of the single quotes.

However, when shipit runs it, the acutal command is

ssh foo@server.com "mysql -u'xxx' -p'xxx$xx' -h'127.0.0.1'"

In this instance, because the outer double quotes, the dollar needs to be escaped within context of the ssh command.

[gregberge]

@timkelty OK let's escape $

[nkovacs]

It would be better to use single quotes in the ssh command, like this:

ssh foo@server.com 'mysql -u'\''xxx'\'' -p'\''xxx$xx'\'' -h'\''127.0.0.1'\'''

(The last '' could be removed, but it's simpler to just leave it.)

Since you can't have single quotes inside single quotes (even escaped), you have to close the first single-quoted string, immediately add a literal single quote (that's why it's escaped), then continue with another single-quoted part of the string.

So what you have to do is replace each single quote inside the command with '\'' (or '"'"') and add single quotes around it before passing it to ssh: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1250079/how-to-escape-single-quotes-within-single-quoted-strings