escaping parentheses in alertcmd

[Mel]

At least on Linux, if there are parentheses in the text of
the alert message passed to the "alertcmd", it fails when it
is passed to the shell with 'sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected'.

In function onAlert in file etmWX.py I worked around this with,
cmd = cmd.replace("(", "\(")
cmd = cmd.replace(")", "\)")
before the call to os.system(cmd).
Not sure this is the right fix and I guess there are other
characters to escape also?

[Mel]

I also needed:

cmd = cmd.replace("'", "\\'")

And I think another one that may be wanted is?

cmd = cmd.replace("`", "\\`")

[Dan]

Mel,

Could you give an example of an alert message and an alertcmd that causes the problem?

Thanks,
Dan

[Mel]

Alert message (line in etmdata .text file):

* Feed Jack's dog (silly) @d Apr 7 2012 @a5 @s 4:05pm @e+0

Alert command:
alertcmd = '''msgat -c yellow/reverse now %(m)s [etm %(T)s]'''

My shell script "msgat" writes it's arguments to a file,
but the actual command doesn't matter since the call to
os.system() gets a shell error from the arguments before
it can execute anything.

sh: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string

In the above case it fails on the single quote in "jack's"
but if that is removed it would then fail on the parenthesis
in "(silly)".

[Dan]

Mel,

I can't duplicate this either under unbuntu or os x lion.  Would you try modifying your alertcmd as follows?

 alertcmd = '''msgat -c yellow/reverse now "%(m)s" [etm "%(T)s"] '''

-Dan

[Mel]

Dan,
Yes using double quotes to escape the text passed to the shell
fixes it (and is a better way to do it). Thanks, don't know
why I didn't think to do that. BTW, I'm using ubuntu also,
so not sure why you couldn't duplicate it.

[Dan]

Mel,

I first tried to duplicate the problem using your alert message but not your alert command.  When I couldn't, I compared your alertcmd to mine and noticed the missing quotes.  Sorry for misleading you.

-Dan