Re: quote interpretation via vars without eval

[Marco Ippolito]

On 15/03/2021 16:39, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 08:28:24PM +0100, Alex fxmbsw7 Ratchev wrote:
> > btw greycat if you didnt watch it was command ls
> > --quoting-style=shell-escape -cF ( | awk .. )
>
> The ParsingLs wiki page does mention this, at the bottom.  It's a recent
> addition to GNU coreutils, and as such is extremely non-portable.  And
> requires the use of eval, *and* the use of bash (not sh).
>
> Every other use of ls's output in a script is wrong.  If your script isn't
> a bash script, it's wrong.  If your system isn't using GNU coreutils,
> it's wrong.  If your version of GNU coreutils is older than ~2016, it's
> wrong.

Interestingly, I checked and Debian Jessie (currently oldoldstable) uses 
package coreutils_8.23-4 which does have a < 2016 ls.

Now, Long Term Support ended for it (i.e. voluntary security support for 
it beyond oldstable) in mid 2020 so maybe a system with such an old 
coreutils installation, likely not getting any security updates unless 
they are applied in-house or through an interest group, perhaps has a 
bigger problem, but I'd be curious to know how many production systems 
out there are kept this backwards.