type: special characters (e.g. @ in email) don't land; standalone `type` treats text as an element selector

[yassiEmp]

Problem

Two related issues with type while automating a login form (email + password):

1. Special characters are mangled

agent-droid tap @e5 --then type "owner@seed.com" did not put owner@seed.com into the focused field — the input ended up showing garbage (e.g. a stray 0), and the @ / parts of the string were dropped.

The underlying cause appears to be that type shells out to adb shell input text <text>, which mishandles characters like @ unless they're escaped (input text 'owner\@seed.com' works). Spaces, &, (, ), <, >, ;, |, ', " have the same class of problem.

Workaround currently needed: drop to raw adb with manual escaping:

adb shell input text 'owner\@seed.com'

2. Standalone type is ambiguous with element selectors

agent-droid type "owner@seed.com" (without a preceding --then) fails with:

agent-droid error: No element matching "owner@seed.com". Run `droid snapshot` to see what's on screen.

i.e. the bare positional argument is interpreted as an element ref/target to find, not as text to type. It only works when chained as tap @eN --then type "...".

Suggested fix

• Escape the text for adb input text (replace spaces with %s and backslash-escape shell/input-special characters: `@ & ( ) < > ; | ' " `` space etc.), or send it via base64/keyevent fallback for full Unicode.
• Make type accept text unambiguously (e.g. require --text, or only treat a leading @ref as a target and the rest as literal text), so type "free text" works standalone.

Environment

• Windows host, Samsung physical device (R38M6063PXE), Android.