`exec': string contains null byte (ArgumentError)

arguments, cmd, exec, ruby, string

Solution

Your `cmd` string has got a null (i.e. zero) byte in it somehow. Using `puts` won’t show up any null bytes, they’ll just be left out of the output:

1.8.7 :001 > exec "\0"
ArgumentError: string contains null byte
        from (irb):1:in `exec'
        from (irb):1
1.8.7 :002 > puts "n\0n"
nn
 => nil

You should probably check how your `rep`, `svn_user` and `pxs` variables are being populated to see if you can track down the source of these null bytes, but as a quick fix you could use `gsub!` to remove them:

cmd.gsub!(/\0/, '')

Problem

``` cmd = "snv co #{rep} --username #{svn_user} --password #{pxs}" puts cmd # this code wotks and prints all vars values normally exec(cmd) ``` ``` xpto.rb:69:in `exec': string contains null byte (ArgumentError) from xpto.rb:69 ``` ``` $ ruby -v ruby 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [i686-linux] $ gem -v 1.3.7 ``` Whats going on? How can I solve this?

Original source