Golang: Executing a command with its arguments

Question

I'm trying to execute a command using go.

executableCommand := strings.Split("git commit -m 'hello world'", " ")
executeCommand(executableCommand[0], executableCommand[1:]...)
cmd := exec.Command(command, args...)

But here is what I get

error: pathspec 'world"' did not match any file(s) known to git.
exit status 1

This is because -m gets 'hello only and not 'hello world' since the command line is split using " ".

Any idea to make it work?

Grzegorz Żur · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-14 13:25:05Z

17

What you want is actually hard to achieve without help of shell that interprets quotes etc. So you may use shell to run your command.

exec.Command("sh", "-c", "echo '1 2 3'")

answered Jul 14, 2016 at 13:25

Grzegorz Żur

49.5k17 gold badges122 silver badges112 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

DarkerIvy Over a year ago

Such a simple solution! Is there an equivalently simple solution for Windows?

Chris W Over a year ago

Keep in mind doing something like this can make your program more vulnerable to command injection vulnerabilities

Endre Simo · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-14 13:34:20Z

3

What about to escape the quotes, then use the strconv.Unquote function?

executableCommand := strings.Split(strconv.Unquote("git commit -m \"hello world\"", " "))
executeCommand(executableCommand[0], executableCommand[1:]...)
cmd := exec.Command(command, args...)

Of course this will vary of how shell will interpret quotes.

Here is short demonstration:

https://play.golang.org/p/V6uqWcczGV

answered Jul 14, 2016 at 13:34

Endre Simo

11.6k3 gold badges44 silver badges52 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Golang: Executing a command with its arguments

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

2 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related