Escape double quotes in parameter

Question

In Unix I could run myscript   test   and I would get  test    In Windows cmd I get  test    How can I pass double-quotes as a parameter  I would like to know how to do this manually from a cmd window so I don t have to write a program to test my program

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I m calling powershell from cmd  and passing quotes and neither escapes here worked  The grave accent worked to escape double quotes on this Win 10 surface pro    gt powershell exe  echo la     gt  gt  test  gt type test la    Below are outputs I got for other characters to escape a double quote   la  la  la la    Using another quote to escape a quote resulted in no quotes  As you can see  the characters themselves got typed  but didn t escape the double quotes

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As none of the answers above are straight forward  Backslash escape   is what you need  myscript   quot test  quot

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I cannot quickly reproduce the symptoms  if I try myscript   test   with a batch file myscript bat containing just  echo  1 or even  echo   1  I get all quotes    test    Perhaps you can try the escape character   like this  myscript    test

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Try this   myscript    test         escape to a single   in the parameter

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Another way to escape quotes  though probably not preferable   which I ve found used in certain places is to use multiple double-quotes  For the purpose of making other people s code legible  I ll explain   Here s a set of basic rules    When not wrapped in double-quoted groups  spaces separate parameters program param1 param2 param 3 will pass four parameters to program exe   nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp param1  param2  param  and 3  A double-quoted group ignores spaces as value separators when passing parameters to programs program one two  three and more  will pass three parameters to program exe  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp  nbsp one  two  and three and more  Now to explain some of the confusion  Double-quoted groups that appear directly adjacent to text not wrapped with double-quotes join into one parameter hello to the  entire world acts as one parameter  helloto the entireworld  Note  The previous rule does NOT imply that two double-quoted groups can appear directly adjacent to one another  Any double-quote directly following a closing quote is treated as  or as part of  plain unwrapped text that is adjacent to the double-quoted group  but only one double-quote  Tim says    Hi     will act as one parameter  Tim says   Hi     Thus there are three different types of double-quotes  quotes that open  quotes that close  and quotes that act as plain-text  Here s the breakdown of that last confusing line        open double-quote group T   inside   s i   inside   s m   inside   s     inside   s - space doesn t separate s   inside   s a   inside   s y   inside   s s   inside   s     inside   s     inside   s - space doesn t separate     close double-quoted group     quote directly follows closer - acts as plain unwrapped text    H   outside   s - gets joined to previous adjacent group i   outside   s -         outside   s -         open double-quote group     close double-quote group     quote directly follows closer - acts as plain unwrapped text      Thus  the text effectively joins four groups of characters  one with nothing  however   Tim says   nbsp is the first  wrapped to escape the spaces  Hi  is the second  not wrapped  there are no spaces   nbsp is the third  a double-quote group wrapping nothing   is the fourth  the unwrapped close quote   As you can see  the double-quote group wrapping nothing is still necessary since  without it  the following double-quote would open up a double-quoted group instead of acting as plain-text   From this  it should be recognizable that therefore  inside and outside quotes  three double-quotes act as a plain-text unescaped double-quote     Tim said to him     What s been happening lately        will print Tim said to him   What s been happening lately   as expected  Therefore  three quotes can always be reliably used as an escape However  in understanding it  you may note that the four quotes at the end can be reduced to a mere two since it technically is adding another unnecessary empty double-quoted group   Here are a few examples to close it off    program a b                       REM sends  a  and  b  program    a                      REM sends   a   program    a b                    REM sends   a  and  b   program     Hello     Mike said   REM sends   Hello   Mike said   program   a  b  c  d              REM sends  abcd  since the    groups wrap nothing program  hello to    quotes       REM sends  hello to  quotes   program     hello world           REM sends   hello world   program    hello  world           REM sends   hello world   program    hello  world           REM sends   hello  and  world   program  hello   world            REM sends  hello  world   program  hello    world           REM sends  hello  world     Final note  I did not read any of this from any tutorial - I came up with all of it by experimenting  Therefore  my explanation may not be true internally  Nonetheless all the examples above evaluate as given  thus validating  but not proving  my theory   I tested this on Windows 7  64bit using only   exe calls with parameter passing  not   bat  but I would suppose it works the same

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The 2nd document quoted by Peter Mortensen in his comment on the answer of Codesmith made things much clearer for me   That document was written by windowsinspired com   The link repeated   A Better Way To Understand Quoting and Escaping of Windows Command Line Arguments   Some further trial and error leads to the following guideline   Escape every double quote   with a caret     If you want other characters with special meaning to the Windows command shell  e g    lt    gt       amp   to be interpreted as regular characters instead  then escape them with a caret  too   If you want your program foo to receive the command line text  a  b c   gt  d and redirect its output to file out txt  then start your program as follows from the Windows command shell   foo   a   b c     gt  d  gt  out txt   If foo interprets    as a literal double quote and expects unescaped double quotes to delimit arguments that include whitespace  then foo interprets the command as specifying one argument a b c  one argument  gt   and one argument d   If instead foo interprets a doubled double quote    as a literal double quote  then start your program as  foo   a    b c     gt  d  gt  out txt   The key insight from the quoted document is that  to the Windows command shell  an unescaped double quote triggers switching between two possible states   Some further trial and error implies that in the initial state  redirection  to a file or pipe  is recognized and a caret   escapes a double quote and the caret is removed from the input   In the other state  redirection is not recognized and a caret does not escape a double quote and isn t removed   Let s refer to these states as  outside  and  inside   respectively   If you want to redirect the output of your command  then the command shell must be in the outside state when it reaches the redirection  so there must be an even number of unescaped  by caret  double quotes preceding the redirection   foo  a  b    gt  out txt won t work -- the command shell passes the entire  a  b    gt  out txt to foo as its combined command line arguments  instead of passing only  a  b   and redirecting the output to out txt   foo  a   b    gt  out txt won t work  either  because the caret   is encountered in the inside state where it is an ordinary character and not an escape character  so  a   b    gt  out txt gets passed to foo   The only way that  hopefully  always works is to keep the command shell always in the outside state  because then redirection works   If you don t need redirection  or other characters with special meaning to the command shell   then you can do without the carets   If foo interprets    as a literal double quote  then you can call it as  foo  a  b c    Then foo receives  a  b c  as its combined arguments text and can interpret it as a single argument equal to a b c   Now -- finally -- to the original question   myscript   test   called from the Windows command shell passes   test   to myscript   Apparently myscript interprets the single and double quotes as argument delimiters and removes them   You need to figure out what myscript accepts as a literal double quote and then specify that in your command  using   to escape any characters that have special meaning to the Windows command shell   Given that myscript is also available on Unix  perhaps    does the trick   Try  myscript    test      or  if you don t need redirection   myscript   test

[windows] Escape double quotes in parameter

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