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I.1.3.5 start-process-shell-command

Function: start-process-shell-command name buffer-or-name command ¶

This function is like start-process, except that it uses a shell to execute the specified COMMAND.

COMMAND

The argument COMMAND is a shell command string.

The variable shell-file-name specifies which shell to use.

The point of running a program through the shell, rather than directly with make-process or start-process, is so that you can employ shell features such as wildcards in the arguments. It follows that if you include any arbitrary user-specified arguments in the command, you should quote them with shell-quote-argument first, so that any special shell characters do not have their special shell meanings.