The exec command treats ampersands (&) in its arguments specially, e.g. for making execution asynchronous. This can be a problem if an argument, like an URL, contains ampersamds.
[email protected] (Petteri K) writes in the comp.lang.tcl newsgroup:
Would anybody know a workaround in case $url contains character '&' e.g. http://127.0.0.1/cgi-bin/script?var1=abc&var2=xyz
Benjamin Riefenstahl replied: exec plays tricks with quoting which make it impossible for me to get the right command executed in Tcl 8.3.4. What works on W2K here though is this:
set url "http://www.tcl.tk?hello&hi" set shell [open "|[file join $env(COMSPEC)]" w] fconfigure $shell -buffering line puts $shell "start \"\" \"$url\"" puts $shell exit close $shell
I hope this works on Windows 9x/Me, too.
For Unix/Linux, it is highly probable that the line
set shell [open "|/bin/sh" w]
works as well (just in place of the "start" command, you'd have to substitute a more specific one...)
But one idea for more cross-platformity: Unix has (guaranteed?) env(SHELL) to give the default shell; Windows has env(COMSPEC), Mac I don't know. Would it be worthwile to unify these into a, say, ::tcl_platform(shell) element? (RS)