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Winbox-Args contains a single function that escapes command-line arguments. On non-Windows platforms it calls the PHP escapeshellarg function, but on Windows it uses a more robust method.

This is because escapeshellarg on Windows takes a simple approach that will probably work out okay: it wraps everything in double-quotes and replaces characters that might confuse things (double-quotes, percent signs and exclamation marks) with a space. If something breaks then you have to provide your own solution.

This is actually a non-trivial problem because the command you want to execute is usually passed through cmd.exe. And the rules it uses to create a command-line differ slightly from the rules which the new process uses to parse out the arguments.

Topics

The following topics step through the factors that lead to this solution:

• How Windows PHP executes programs
• How Windows parses the command-line
• How cmd.exe parses a command
• How quotes can break batch scripts
• Implementing a solution

References

• General
• PHP manual and source code