How do I pass a single string with multiple arguments to std::process::Command?

Question

Rust\'s std::process::Command type demands that process arguments be passed in individually via .arg(\"-arg1\").arg(\"-arg2\") or as a vector of st

Answer 1

Implementation which does not support quoted arguments (but easy to add):

fn sh(command: &str) -> std::io::Result {
    let mut the_args = command.split(' '); // todo: support quoted strings
    let first: &str = the_args.next().unwrap();
    let rest: Vec<&str> = the_args.collect::>();
    std::process::Command::new(first).args(rest).output()
}

fn main() {
    let output = sh("ls -la").unwrap(); 
    let s = String::from_utf8_lossy(&output.stdout).to_string();
    println!("{:?}", s);
}

You have to do quite a bit of song and dance with iterators and string conversions. This tripped me up for a few days. I hope someone can chime in with a basic parser that handles quoted argument strings :).