node child_process.spawn not working with spaces in path on windows

Question

How to provide a path to child_process.spawn

For example the path:

c:\users\marco\my documents\project\someexecutable

The path is provided by the enduser from a configuration file.

var child_process = require('child_process');
var path = require('path');
var pathToExecute = path.join(options.toolsPath, 'mspec.exe');
child_process.spawn(pathToExecute, options.args);

Currently only the part after the space is used by child_process.spawn

I also tried by adding quotes arround the path like this:

var child_process = require('child_process');
var path = require('path');
var pathToExecute = path.join(options.toolsPath, 'mspec.exe');
child_process.spawn('"' + pathToExecute + '"', options.args);

However this results in a ENOENT error.

Answer 1

As per https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/7367#issuecomment-229728704 one can use the { shell: true } option.

For example

const { spawn } = require('child_process');
const ls = spawn(process.env.comspec, ['/c', 'dir /b "C:\\users\\Trevor\\Documents\\Adobe Scripts"'],  { shell: true });

Will work.