Escape special character in a windows batch

Question

I have a batch file that receive a path as first argument. The path is always composed with specials characters like ^,é or è.

The

Answer 1

You need to escape it twice - once when you input the path as an argument to the batch script, and again when echo'ing it:

caret_input.bat:

echo %1

Double-escaped (notice how it's already escaped when the batch file starts outputting):

C:\>caret_input.bat my\path^^^^is\special

C:\>echo my\path^is\special
my\path^is\special

If you were to use a string with a special character inside the batch file, your method of escaping it just once would work just fine:

caret_escape.bat:

echo my\path^^is\special

and the output

C:\>echo my\path^is\special
my\path^is\special