That example is pretty sad, the solution has always been the same (even in sh), use an argv based wrapper instead of something like system(3): exec(`figlet "

That example is pretty sad, the solution has always been the same (even in sh), use an argv based wrapper instead of something like system(3): exec(`figlet "Welcome, ${username}" | lolcat -f`) // Should be spawn(["sh", "-c", "figlet \"Welcome, $1\" | lolcat -f", "argv0", username]) > This is one reason why, really, nobody should use a shell that was optimized for commandline use, for scripting. Tcl showed me you can have your cake and eat it, you just need sane quoting rules (like don't make IFS splitting the default and use matched braces for your quoting syntax to solve nesting) and arrays to escape the infamous quoting hell. Though I agree that sh is dangerous for newbies, I always advise "1. ALWAYS set -eu, 2. shellcheck" to them.