Escaping quotes and double quotes
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)`"
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 "Content-Type: application/json" -XPOST localhost:9200/index_name/inded_type -d"{\`"velocity\`":3.14}"
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.
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).