Escaping quotes and double quotes

Question

How do I properly escape the quotes in the -param value in the following command line    cmd    server toto exe -batch B -param  sort1 parmtxt  Security ID 1234    Invoke-Expression  cmd    This of course fails  I tried to escape the quotes  single and double  using the escape character   and did various combination  but nothing is working

User · Accepted Answer

Escaping parameters like that is usually source of frustration and feels a lot like a time wasted. I see you're on v2 so I would suggest using a technique that Joel "Jaykul" Bennet blogged about a while ago.

Long story short: you just wrap your string with @' ... '@ :

Start-Process \\server\toto.exe @'
-batch=B -param="sort1;parmtxt='Security ID=1234'"
'@

(Mind that I assumed which quotes are needed, and which things you were attempting to escape.) If you want to work with the output, you may want to add the -NoNewWindow switch.

BTW: this was so important issue that since v3 you can use --% to stop the PowerShell parser from doing anything with your parameters:

\\server\toto.exe --% -batch=b -param="sort1;paramtxt='Security ID=1234'"

... should work fine there (with the same assumption).

User · Answer

Using the backtick     works fine for me if I put them in the following places    cmd    server toto exe -batch B -param   sort1 parmtxt  Security ID 1234        cmd returns as     server toto exe -batch B -param  sort1 parmtxt  Security ID 1234     Is that what you were looking for   The error PowerShell gave me referred to an unexpected token  sort1   and that s how I determined where to put the backticks   The           syntax is called a  here string  and will return exactly what is entered  You can also use them to populate variables in the following fashion    cmd       server toto exe -batch B -param  sort1 parmtxt  Security ID 1234         The opening and closing symbols must be on their own line as shown above

User · Answer

In Powershell 5 escaping double quotes can be done by backtick      But sometimes you need to provide your double quotes escaped which can be done by backslash   backtick       Eg in this curl call  C  Windows System32 curl exe -s -k -H  quot Content-Type  application json quot  -XPOST localhost 9200 index name inded type -d quot     quot velocity   quot  3 14  quot

User · Answer

I found myself in a similar predicament today while trying to run a command through a Node js module   I was using the PowerShell and trying to run   command -e  func  a     But with the extra symbols  PowerShell was mangling the arguments  To fix  I back-tick escaped double-quote marks   command -e   func  a

[powershell-2.0] Escaping quotes and double quotes

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