job000607
Open
P4Perl P4::MergeData::RunMergeTool, quote filename arguments to protect from shell metacharacters
Also Perforce internal job088679 has been logged against p4api.
Using P4Perl to do a merge that uses P4::MergeData::RunMergeTool to call out to a bash script as the merge tool.
On Linux, if filenames have the shell metacharacter "(" in their names it causes bash to fail with "h: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `(' "
Other shell metacharacters would likely cause issues as well. This is expected shell behaviour and you would normally either quote a filename that contains metacharacters or escape the metacharacters.
For "(" it works on windows as "(" isn't a windows cmd shell metacharacter.
Quoting the arguments passed from RunMergeTool should escape the special meaning of any shell metacharacters.
It doesn't seem to be a P4Perl problem directly; invoking P4::MergeData::RunMergeTool, the control is handed over to the native P4.so.
Somewhere in P4.so, there's probably a call like system("mergeTool BASE THEIRS YOURS MERGED").
Perhaps that could be adjusted to allow for special characters especially in the parameters.
Currently filename args are quoted if they contain spaces which appears to be referred to in the C api that P4Perl interfaces with:
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/p4api/index.html
include\p4\runcmd.h has the following commends on line 67/68:
* NT: quote with " all args, and use CreateProcess()
* UNIX: quote with ' args with spaces, and use system()
Also Perforce internal job088679 has been logged against p4api.
Using P4Perl to do a merge that uses P4::MergeData::RunMergeTool to call out to a bash script as the merge tool.
On Linux, if filenames have the shell metacharacter "(" in their names it causes bash to fail with "h: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `(' "
Other shell metacharacters would likely cause issues as well. This is expected shell behaviour and you would normally either quote a filename that contains metacharacters or escape the metacharacters.
For "(" it works on windows as "(" isn't a windows cmd shell metacharacter.
Quoting the arguments passed from RunMergeTool should escape the special meaning of any shell metacharacters.
It doesn't seem to be a P4Perl problem directly; invoking P4::MergeData::RunMergeTool, the control is handed over to the native P4.so.
Somewhere in P4.so, there's probably a call like system("mergeTool BASE THEIRS YOURS MERGED").
Perhaps that could be adjusted to allow for special characters especially in the parameters.
Currently filename args are quoted if they contain spaces which appears to be referred to in the C api that P4Perl interfaces with:
https://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/p4api/index.html
include\p4\runcmd.h has the following commends on line 67/68:
* NT: quote with " all args, and use CreateProcess()
* UNIX: quote with ' args with spaces, and use system()
- Status
- Open
- Project
- p4perl
- Severity
- C
- Reported By
- reg_smith
- Reported Date
- 8 years ago
- Modified By
- Perforce maintenance
- Modified Date
- 6 years ago
- Owned By
- reg_smith
- Type
- Feature
[I reported this originally, and was involved in the investigation]
This doesn't seem like a P4Perl bug. The error is somewhere in the native P4 library against which P4Perl links (and to which include\p4\runcmd.h corresponds).
To add detail: I hit the problem with filenames containing "(" and ";", each failing differently, but the shell being the culprit in both cases. I didn't hit the problem with filenames containing whitespace because of the above ("UNIX: quote with ' args with spaces, and use system()").
I never hit the problem (with the same files) on Windows. I believe the reason is that the shell never gets involved via CreateProcess() - not that "(" isn't a Windows metacharacter. (";" definitely is a Windows CMD metacharacter and I never had issues with ";" either.)
Suggested solutions:
PROPOSAL 1: You already handle spaces as special ("UNIX: quote with ' args with spaces, and use system()"). Do the same with the other shell metacharacters. I.e. if the filename contains ";", it must be quoted too.
PROPOSAL 2: Use execve (or friends) instead of system. That allows you to specify the parameters as an array, and the shell doesn't get involved.