Run shell command with many arguments

Question

I have a very long command with many arguments, and somehow it's not working the way it should work. The following knife command will connect to remote vCenter and create a VM called node1 . How do I wrap the following command and run inside ruby? Am I doing something wrong?

var_name = 'node1'
var_folder = 'folder1'
var_datastore = 'datastore1'
var_template_file = 'template_foo'
var_template = 'foo'
var_location = 'US'

cmd = 'knife vsphere vm clone var_name --dest-folder var_folder --datastore var_datastore --template-file var_template_file --template var_template -f var_location'

system(cmd)

Answer 1

require 'shellwords'
cmd = "knife vsphere vm clone #{var_name.shellescape} --dest-folder #{var_folder.shellescape} --datastore #{var_datastore.shellescape} --template-file #{var_template_file.shellescape} --template #{var_template.shellescape} -f #{var_location.shellescape}"

In your specific case it would work even without shellescape , but better safe than sorry.

Answer 2

Variables are not resolved in your command. Try using #{var_name} etc for all variables in the varaible cmd