How can I pass command-line arguments containing special characters to a process launched via Perl or Bash?

Question

I need to launch curl for a test. I need to send XML which has " / and other crazy things. Whats the quickest way to do it? I tried

curl -k -d '<xs:element name="Login"/>' https://thewebsite.com/page.exe

with no luck.

Answer 1

Backslash escape it.

\"

Answer 2

In Perl, use the list form of system:

system curl 
    => qw(-k -d '<xs:element name="Login"/>' https://thewebsite.com/page.exe);

Or, better yet, use WWW::Curl (see also the libcurl documentation).

Answer 3

The use of 'qw' to quote parameters given in one of the answers here is not correct, qw will explictly escape and pass the single quotes around the xs tag, where as in the OP's example, they wouldn't

You could use...

system('curl', '-k', '-d', '<xs:element name="Login"/>', 
       'https://thewebsite.com/page.exe');

Which should be what you're after. I'd try to use the module though.