enhance jobstarter argument handling

LSF has a job starter feature that allows for programs to execute just prior to the start of a job. This feature is often used to wrap the execution side of one's job. The arguments to the job are passed to a shell script as part of this execution in a %USRCMD variable. However, those arguments are not passed in an unadulterated way to the executing shell. They are often required to be quoted with single or double quotes which leads to the arguments being evaluated in the shell before being executed. At first glance, this doesn't appear to be a problem, but once one has constructed a complicated set of arguments to pass their job it becomes clear that their needs to be a better way to retrieve the arguments in a pristine manner without any shell interpretation. The easiest example to display the problem is to use a job starter and send a simple command with unbalanced single or double quotes. To solve this problem, I propose an RFE to the LSF job starter mechanism that will pass the arguments to the executing program in a pristine way without any shell interpolation. For instance, one could implement this simply by writing the arguments "as is" to a text file that could be read by the job starter program.

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| Aug 18, 2020

We have considered this request and it would mean changing functionality that the customer base is already using and expecting to remain. As such we are not able to able to implement this.If there is broad interest for this, it can be resubmitted in 18 months.

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enhance jobstarter argument handling