Task with escaped double quote now fails due to improper evaluation

[kevinbeaudoin]

We are using custom task in vscode to compile some C# solutions using msbuild. The tasks used to run just fine but with latest upgrade our task now fails because double quote escaping isn't performed correctly (see example below)

• VSCode Version: 1.23.1 (used to work in 1.22)
• OS Version: Windows 8.1

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a task similar to this one (Notice the quote escape for the Any CPU param):
   {
   "label": "Build MySolutionName.sln",
   "type": "shell",
   "command": "msbuild",
   "isBackground": false,
   "options": {
   "cwd": "C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\14.0\Bin"
   },
   "args": [
   "${workspaceRoot}\..\..\MySolutionName.sln",
   "/property:Configuration=Debug",
   "/property:platform="Any CPU"",
   "/v:m",
   "/p:WarningLevel=0"
   ],
   "group": "build",
   "problemMatcher": []
   },

2. Here is the task that vscode tries to run (Notice the issue with the part where we specify the Any CPU :
   Executing task: msbuild MySolutionName.sln /property:Configuration=Debug "/property:platform="Any CPU"" /v:m /p:WarningLevel=0

3. Before the upgrade the task was run like below:
   Executing task: msbuild MySolutionName.sln /property:Configuration=Debug /property:platform="Any CPU" /v:m /p:WarningLevel=0

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

[dbaeumer]

@kevinbeaudoin actually shell tasks with args quoting and spaces were poorly supported and there should have been an warning / error in the task output informing that if a shell task specifies args with spaces they should be folded into the command. I apologies if this didn't happen in your case (but I am confident it did looking at your example). (side note: the reason for this is that shell take a command line as arguments and not a command and args and VS Code always tried to create a command line from the command and the args but did a poor job on doing this correctly in the past)

To make the story better we improved the quoting/escaping behavior in 1.22 in the following way:

• args with spaces are now allowed and we quote such args strongly.
• users can control how args are quoted by providing a literal and not a single string.

For complex command lines where only parts inside the command line should be quoted the recommendation is to write one single command line. In our example something like:

"command": "msbuild ${workspaceRoot}....\MySolutionName.sln /property:Configuration=Debug /property:platform="Any CPU" /v:m /p:WarningLevel=0"

since this gives you the biggest control over the command. Since users uses args to split the long command line into lines I added support to provide a string[] for a command for the next release: So with 1.24 you will be able to write:

"command": [
"msbuild",
"${workspaceRoot}....\MySolutionName.sln",
"/property:Configuration=Debug",
"/property:platform="Any CPU",
"/v:m"
"/p:WarningLevel=0"
]

Noticed that there are no args. You construct a command line.

On think I take away from this is that for args we should off a "leave as is" quoting rule which leaves the args untouched even if it has spaces. I will add that.

[dbaeumer]

My last sentence is not correct. The fix here is to detect that "Any CPU" is quoted and leave it untouched.

[dbaeumer]

I added a fix to detect that Any CPU was correctly quoted.

[dbaeumer]

To verify write a simple task that has a space in one of the args which is correctly quoted. Something like

		{
			"type": "shell",
			"label": "echo",
			"command": "echo",
			"args": [
				"dirk\" \"baeumer"
			],
			"problemMatcher": []
		}

The executed command should be echo dirk" "baeumer and not echo "dirk" "baeumer"