kernelspec's argv does not run when concat'ed

[willwhitney]

Replacing the {connection_file} with the one I intend to use, my argv looks like this:

R -e IRkernel::main() --args /Users/will/code/hydrogen/kernel-configs/kernel-faf2d916-7227-4a10-8fb1-d102c2074374.json

Running this gives: ERROR: option '-e' requires a non-empty argument; the argv stitched together should be a correct command. I think it actually just needs quotes around IRkernel::main().

[takluyver]

If you concat them, it's up to you to handle any quoting that's necessary. On POSIX platforms, subprocesses are actually started with a list of arguments. When you use them like that, they work correctly.

[willwhitney]

Oh wow, good call — I can use Node's spawn with the list of arguments.

[takluyver]

Excellent, that should be better. You might want to double check what it does on Windows, where processes are started with a string, but it should be able to do the right thing. In Python, the subprocess module deals with the quoting to convert the list to a string on Windows: https://docs.python.org/3/library/subprocess.html#converting-an-argument-sequence-to-a-string-on-windows