Node.js Shell Script And Arguments

See the documentation here. It is very specific on how to pass command line arguments. Note that you can use exec or spawn. spawn has a specific argument for command line arguments, while with exec you would just pass the arguments as part of the command string to execute.

Directly from the documentation, with explanation comments inline

var util  = require('util'),
    spawn = require('child_process').spawn,
    ls    = spawn('ls', ['-lh', '/usr']); // the second arg is the command 
                                          // options

ls.stdout.on('data', function (data) {    // register one or more handlers
  console.log('stdout: ' + data);
});

ls.stderr.on('data', function (data) {
  console.log('stderr: ' + data);
});

ls.on('exit', function (code) {
  console.log('child process exited with code ' + code);
});

Whereas with exec

var util = require('util'),
    exec = require('child_process').exec,
    child;

child = exec('cat *.js bad_file | wc -l', // command line argument directly in string
  function (error, stdout, stderr) {      // one easy function to capture data/errors
    console.log('stdout: ' + stdout);
    console.log('stderr: ' + stderr);
    if (error !== null) {
      console.log('exec error: ' + error);
    }
});

Finally, note that exec buffers the output. If you want to stream output back to a client, you should use spawn.