Handle quoted admin submit_job paths

[holgerroth]

Summary

• make HCI command parsing honor shell-style quoting for admin commands such as submit_job
• keep a legacy whitespace-splitting fallback for malformed quoting to avoid new parse failures
• add focused unit tests for quoted job paths and existing # command-props behavior

Why

Dragging a job folder into the admin console on Ubuntu can produce a single-quoted path. The current parser only switches to shlex.split() when a command contains double quotes, so single-quoted paths are passed through literally and submit_job rejects the resulting folder path.

Root Cause

nvflare.fuel.hci.cmd_arg_utils.split_to_args() and parse_command_line() special-case double quotes instead of using shell-like tokenization generally. That leaves single quotes in the parsed argument, which then flows into the client-side file transfer path lookup.

Impact

This change allows quoted drag-and-drop job paths to be submitted from the admin console without manually stripping surrounding quotes.

Fixes #1328.

Validation

• pytest tests/unit_test/fuel/hci/cmd_arg_utils_test.py -q

[holgerroth]

/build

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR fixes single-quoted path parsing in the admin console by generalising the " guard in split_to_args and parse_command_line to cover any quote character, routing quoted input through shlex.split with a whitespace-split fallback for malformed quoting. The previously raised concerns about backslash semantics and single-quoted hash paths are both addressed and regression-tested.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Safe to merge; the only remaining finding is a minor edge-case documentation/test gap that does not affect the primary fix.

All P0/P1 concerns from prior review rounds are resolved. The one new observation (props silently dropped for single-quoted commands that also use the hash notation) is P2: the old double-quoted path had the same limitation, the combined scenario was already broken before this PR, and submit_job — the primary target — never uses props.

No files require special attention.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
nvflare/fuel/hci/cmd_arg_utils.py	Refactors split_to_args and parse_command_line to honor single-quoted paths via shlex.split with a whitespace-split fallback; props are silently dropped for any quoted line.
tests/unit_test/fuel/hci/cmd_arg_utils_test.py	New test file covering single-quoted paths, backslash preservation, unmatched-quote fallback, hash-in-quoted-path, double-quote backward compat, and unquoted props; missing combined quoted-args+props scenario.

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A[Input line] --> B{_has_quotes?}
    B -- Yes --> C[_split_quoted_args]
    B -- No --> D[# prop split]
    C --> E{shlex.split succeeds?}
    E -- Yes --> F[Return shlex tokens, props=None]
    E -- No / ValueError --> G[_split_unquoted_args fallback, props=None]
    D --> H[strip line, capture props]
    H --> I[_split_unquoted_args]
    I --> J[Return tokens + props]

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_{Reviews (6): Last reviewed commit: "Merge branch 'main' into codex/fix-submi..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[chesterxgchen]

This PR is not needed,

1. the fix is already in PR #4449

• HCI command parsing already honors shell-style quoting when
  the command contains ":
  • nvflare/fuel/hci/cmd_arg_utils.py:22
  • split_to_args() uses shlex.split(line) if " is present
• The server registry uses that tokenizer directly:
  • nvflare/fuel/hci/server/reg.py:67

2. the malformat string should fallback, should fail

[holgerroth]

/build

[holgerroth]

I re-checked this against current upstream/main because issue #1328 is specifically about Ubuntu drag-and-drop wrapping the job folder in single quotes, for example:

submit_job '/home/.../job_configs/cifar10_splitnn'

That case still reproduces on today's upstream/main after #4449. split_to_args() and parse_command_line() still only switch to shlex.split() when the command contains a double quote, so single-quoted paths are still passed through with the quotes intact, and quoted paths containing # still get split incorrectly in parse_command_line().

So from the perspective of issue #1328, I don't think #4449 fully covers the problem yet. If the concern is specifically the malformed-input fallback behavior, I'm happy to adjust that part separately, but the single-quoted drag-and-drop case from #1328 still appears to be unfixed on main.

[holgerroth]

/build

[holgerroth]

/build

[holgerroth]

/build