5.21.2 Parsing Rules
When operating in non-POSIX mode, shlex will try to obey to
the following rules.
- Quote characters are not recognized within words
(
Do"Not"Separate
is parsed as the single word
Do"Not"Separate
);
- Escape characters are not recognized;
- Enclosing characters in quotes preserve the literal value of
all characters within the quotes;
- Closing quotes separate words (
"Do"Separate
is parsed
as "Do"
and Separate
);
- If whitespace_split is
False
, any character not
declared to be a word character, whitespace, or a quote will be
returned as a single-character token. If it is True
,
shlex will only split words in whitespaces;
- EOF is signaled with an empty string (
''
);
- It's not possible to parse empty strings, even if quoted.
When operating in POSIX mode, shlex will try to obey to the
following parsing rules.
- Quotes are stripped out, and do not separate words
(
"Do"Not"Separate"
is parsed as the single word
DoNotSeparate
);
- Non-quoted escape characters (e.g. "\")
preserve the literal value of the next character that follows;
- Enclosing characters in quotes which are not part of
escapedquotes (e.g. "'") preserve the literal
value of all characters within the quotes;
- Enclosing characters in quotes which are part of
escapedquotes (e.g. """) preserves the literal
value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of
the characters mentioned in escape. The escape characters
retain its special meaning only when followed by the quote in use,
or the escape character itself. Otherwise the escape character
will be considered a normal character.
- EOF is signaled with a None value;
- Quoted empty strings (
''
) are allowed;
Release 2.4c1, documentation updated on 18 November 2004.
See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.