Re: [bug-gnulib] new modules for Java interoperability

[Bruno Haible]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> GNU diffutils has a quotesys module which does something quite similar.
> ...
> Looking at the implementations, I notice that quotesys attempts to
> generate a "pretty" string in cases where shell-quote doesn't bother.
> E.g., for the string
>
> --header=foo bar
>
> quote_system_arg generates
>
> --header='foo bar'
>
> rather than
>
> --header=foo\ bar

shell-quote uses the quotearg style shell_quoting_style, which generates
  '--header=foo bar'

If you want to get
  --header='foo bar'
instead, you can add a corresponding shell_pretty_quoting_style to
the module quotearg; that's your territory :-)

> > (I mean, for example, the simple purpose of downloading a file from
> > a given URL with a timeout - this is a functionality needed by
> > gettext - can be done by either a 65-line Java program or by a 200
> > KB special-purpose C program called 'wget'.)
>
> Yes, that's a real problem.  One other thought: is it convenient to
> invoke Java code from C programs without the hassle of executing a new
> program?

It's much more of a hassle to do so without posix_spawn(): It can be done
in a portable way by use of the JNI, or in a less portable one by use of
the gij's CNI. It's a can of worms in itself.

Bruno