webbrowser module bug?

[Ron Adam]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Ron Adam wrote:
>> Reseting the default browser with the gnome default application window
>> confirmed this.  The browser selection can either have the quotes around
>> the args "%s" paremteter, or not depending on how and what sets it.
>>
>> Seems to me it should be quoted unless spaces in path names are never a
>> problem in Linux.  So this could be both a python bug and a Gnome desktop
>> bug.  Firefox probably does the right thing by putting the quotes around
>> it, but that causes problems for webbrowser.py, which doesn't expect them.
> 
> Quoting arguments in the way described is the safe, easy option (with
> some potential problems with ' characters that can be worked around),
> and I imagine that it's done precisely because other applications
> could pass a path with spaces as the URL, and that such applications
> would be invoking the command in a shell environment. Sadly, this
> conflicts with any other precautionary measures, causing a degree of
> "overquoting".
> 
> Resetting the GNOME default is a workaround, but I'm not convinced
> that it would be satisfactory. What happens if you try and open an
> HTML file, in the file browser or some other application which uses
> the desktop preferences, where the filename contains spaces?

I'm not sure how to test this.  Most things I can think of call the web 
browser directly.  Maybe a link in an email?

Yes, it is a work around.  The webbrowser module needs to be smarter about 
quotes.  As I said, this is fixed in 2.6 already.  I emailed the module 
maintainer, and will probably file a bug report too.

Ron