Subject: bug#8531: 24.0.50; shell-quote-argument shouldn't escape special characters

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:04:37 +0300

> From: Thierry Volpiatto <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:10:49 +0200
> 
> > I have no problem with using the
> > result of shell-quote-argument in "M-!".
> Which result?
> Which command?

The command was "ls Vid\éos".  It displayed the files in that
directory.

> I am speaking of escaping accentued characters "é, à etc..."

Yes, so am I.

> Why `shell-quote-argument' escape such characters?

Because it wants to play safe.  In a Posix shell, any non-special
character preceded with a backslash stands for itself, I'm sure you
know that.  Backslash-escaping anything that is not in the Posix
character set avoids too much knowledge about the underlying shell's
special characters, and should be harmless if the escaped characters
are not special.