How do I pass in a string with spaces into PowerShell?

Question

Given:

# test1.ps1
param(
    $x = \"\",
    $y = \"\"
)

&echo $x $y

Used like so:

powershell test.ps1

Answer 1

I had a similar problem but in my case I was trying to run a cmdlet, and the call was being made within a Cake script. In this case the single quotes and -file argument did not work:

powershell Get-AuthenticodeSignature 'filename with spaces.dll'

Resulting error: Get-AuthenticodeSignature : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'with'.

I wanted to avoid the batch file if possible.

Solution

What did work was to use a cmd wrapper with /S to unwrap outer quotes:

cmd /S /C "powershell Get-AuthenticodeSignature 'filename with spaces.dll'"