1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/alot/helper.py b/alot/helper.py
index 8d596994..f94e03f2 100644
--- a/alot/helper.py
+++ b/alot/helper.py
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ from datetime import datetime
 from collections import deque
 from string import strip
 import subprocess
+import shlex
 import email
 import os
 import re
@@ -21,6 +22,16 @@ import logging
 import tempfile
 
 
+def split_commandstring(cmdstring):
+    """
+    split command string into a list of strings to pass on to subprocess.Popen
+    and the like. This simply calls shlex.split but works also with unicode
+    bytestrings.
+    """
+    if isinstance(cmdstring, unicode):
+        cmdstring = cmdstring.encode('utf-8', errors='ignore')
+    return shlex.split(cmdstring)
+
 def safely_get(clb, E, on_error=''):
     """
     returns result of :func:`clb` and falls back to `on_error`