No such file or directory error on executing script

Question

I use GNU Emacs 24.3.1 on Ubuntu 14.04 and I have a bash script: ~/path/to the/script/test.sh. As you see the path has space character. Script has a simple content:

ENTRY=`zenity --password --username`

When I try to run script from Emacs by C-c C-x(execute script option from Sh-Script menu), without marking any region, I got this error:

/bin/bash: ~/path/to: No such file or directory

Comint exited abnormally with code 127 ...

But when I try to run that from bash, it runs normally:

~/path/to\ the/script/test.sh

So I'm sure the problem is in about space character in path of script. Also I do not want to change the path (by removing space and for example replacing it by '_') because it is a part of a nested/linked content manager system and changing it may cause a big problem. Is there a way to solve this problem without changing path of script?

Answer 1

Assuming that ctrl-c ctrl-x is bound to execute-interpret, then the system should prompt you with the command to run, suggesting as a default /path/to the/script/test.sh as a default. Edit this default value to put single quotes around the whole thing.

A different way would be to change the command to be run to ./test.sh. I suspect that when you say But when I try to run that from bash, it runs normally. you are actually running this command, not the one emacs offers you by default.

You might consider adding some setting of file variables to the end of the file, e.g.

 #!/bin/bash

 echo Hello there
 ....

 # Local Variables:
 # mode: sh
 # executable-command: "'/path/to the/script/test.sh'"
 # End:

This will query you if you want to set the variable when you load the file.

Answer 2

Here's the workaround that I mentioned:

(defun db48x/shell-quote-arg-list (args)
  (mapcar 'shell-quote-argument args))

(advice-add 'executable-interpret :filter-args 'db48x/shell-quote-arg-list '(name escape-command-name))

This tells emacs to run the db48x/shell-quote-arg-list function on the argument list any time anyone calls executable-interpret. This gives us a change to escape any spaces in it before it's passed off to the original function.

This works quite well; any spaces or shell metacharacters you give to executable-interpret are escaped, and everything works quite well.

There is one downside, however. The next time you run executable-interpret, it will reuse the same value again as the new default script to run. However, it saved the value after we escaped it, so if you use it as-is it will be escaped again. A more complex set of advice needs to be applied to get the right behavior, probably an :around function that escapes the argument, calls the original function, and then overwrites the variable holding the previous command with the unescaped version.

Edit:

Here's the better method I mentioned:

(defun db48x/executable-interpret-escaped (original-func command)
  (funcall original-func (shell-quote-argument command))
  (setf executable-command command))

(advice-add 'executable-interpret :around 'db48x/executable-interpret-escaped '(name escape-command-name))