On Tue, Sep 6, 2016 at 2:08 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> The not-quoting-if-not-needed doesn't appear to do anything useful for me:
>> 'pg-install/bin/pg_ctl' -D 'pg-install/var/data' -l logfile start
>
> Dash is considered a character that needs quoting. It might be possible
> to avoid that if we could be certain that appendShellString's output would
> never be placed in a spot where it could be taken for a switch, but that
> seems like a large assumption to me. Or maybe we could treat it as
> forcing quotes only if it starts the string; but I don't personally care
> enough to write the code for that. Feel free if you want to.
Wouldn't it be taken for a switch even with quoting?
Quoting "-D" seems to work fine, which would suggest the above is true.