Passing parameters to exe

Question

I have a number of scenarios in which I need to pass parameters to command line exes.

I\'ve seen a number of these answered to some extent on this site, but so far I

Answer 1

Try this function coming from PowerShell.com PowerTip it illustrate the usage of Invoke-Expression.

function Call {
  $command = $Args -join " "
  $command += " 2>&1"
  $result = Invoke-Expression($command)
  $result | 
    %{$e=""}{ if( $_.WriteErrorStream ) {$e += $_ } else {$_} }{Write-Warning $e}
}

That gives :

cd "${env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE"
call .\devenv.exe /command "`"File.BatchNewTeamProject C:\stuff\Project51.xml`"

--- Edit ---

There are many things to say here.

First you can find a good help with "about" files try :

Get-help about-*

On the subject you are interested you've got:

Get-help about_Quoting_Rules
Get-Help about_Special_Characters
Get-Help about_Escape_Characters
Get-Help about_Parameters

Second CD, DIR, MD works, but they are just aliases on CmdLets which takes different arguments.

Third to get environment variable it's no longer %systemroot% it's $env:systemroot.

Fourth to start an executable file from powershell you can just type the name of the exe :

PS> notepad c:\temp\test.txt

The command line is first interpreted by powerShell so now if you write :

PS> "C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe"
C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe

It just interpret it as a string. So you can use the & operator and write

PS> & "C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe" c:\test.txt

It works but :

PS> $a = "C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe c:\test.txt"
PS> & $a

Fails and

PS> $a = "C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe c:\test.txt"
PS> Invoke-Expression $a

Works