Re: [PATCH nft,RFC] main: remove need to escape quotes

[Phil Sutter <phil@nwl.cc>]

Hi Pablo,

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 10:41:57PM +0100, Pablo Neira Ayuso wrote:
> If argv[i] contains spaces, then restore the quotes on this string.
> 
> There is one exception though: in case that argc == 2, then assume the
> whole input is coming as a quoted string, eg. nft "add rule x ...;add ..."
> 
> This patch is adjusting a one test that uses quotes to skip escaping one
> semicolon from bash. Two more tests do not need them.

I appreciate your efforts at making my BUGS note obsolete. :)
In this case though, I wonder if this really fixes something: I use
quotes in only two cases:

A) When forced by the parser, e.g. with interface names.
B) To escape the curly braces (and any semi-colons inside) in chain or
   set definitions.

Unless I miss something, case (A) will still need escaped quotes since
interface names usually don't contain whitespace. In case (B), your
patch would typically bite me as I merely quote the braces, like so:

| # nft add chain inet t c '{ type filter hook input priority filter; policy drop; }'

Of course that's a matter of muscle memory, but IIUC, your fix won't
work if one wants to pass flags in addition to a quoted command. Or does
getopt mangle argc?

Cheers, Phil