How do you strip quotes out of an ECHO'ed string in a Windows batch file?

Question

I have a Windows batch file I\'m creating, but I have to ECHO a large complex string, so I\'m having to put double quotes on either end. The problem is that the quotes are

Answer 1

The following batch file starts a series of programs with a delay after each one.

The problem is to pass a command line with parameters for each program. This requires quotes around the program argument, which are removed when the call is made. This illustrates a few techniques in batch file processing.

Look in the local subroutine :mystart for how an argument in quotes is passed in, and the quotes are removed.

@echo off

rem http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/if.mspx?mfr=true

rem Start programs with delay

rem  Wait n seconds
rem  n number retries to communicate with the IP address
rem  1000 milliseconds between the retries
rem  127.0.0.1 is the LocalHost
rem  start /b (silent)  /min (minimized) /belownormal (lower priority)
rem  /normal provides a no-op switch to hold the place of argument 1

rem  start  /normal "Opinions"  %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /e,d:\agar\jobs\opinion
rem  ping 127.0.0.1 -n 8 -w 1000 > nul

rem   Remove quotes in Batch
rem     http://ss64.com/nt/syntax-dequote.html
rem   String manipulation in Batch
rem     http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsStringManipulation.php
rem   ^ line continuation
rem   
rem   set p="One Two"      p has the exact value  "One Two" including the quotes           
rem   set p=%p:~1,-1%      Removes the first and last characters
rem   set p=%p:"=%         Removes all double-quotes
rem   set p=%p:cat=mouse%  Replaces cat with mouse

rem  ping 127.0.0.1 -n 12 -w 1000 > nul
rem        1       2            3                                                         4

@echo on
call :mystart /b/min  "Opinions"   "%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe  /e,d:\agar\jobs\opinion"   8  
@echo on
call :mystart /b/min  "Notepad++"  D:\Prog_D\Notepad++\notepad++.exe  14
@echo on
call :mystart /normal "Firefox"    D:\Prog_D\Firefox\firefox.exe      20
@rem call :mystart /b/min "ProcessExplorer"  D:\Prog_D\AntiVirus\SysInternals\procexp.exe  8
@echo on
call :mystart /b/min/belownormal "Outlook" D:\Prog_D\MSOffice\OFFICE11\outlook.exe  2
@echo off
goto:eof

:mystart
@echo off
 rem  %3 is "program-path  arguments" with the quotes. We remove the quotes
 rem  %4 is seconds to wait after starting that program
 set p=%3
 set p=%p:"=%
 start  %1  %2  %p% 
 ping 127.0.0.1 -n %4 -w 1000 > nul
 goto:eof

Answer 2

http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ is a native win32 port of a bunch of GNU utilities including sed, gawk, grep and wget. (sorry that I don't have enough rep to post this as a comment!)

Answer 3

You can use the %var:x=y% construction that replaces all x with y.

See this example what it can do:

set I="Text in quotes"
rem next line replaces " with blanks
set J=%I:"=%
echo original %I%
rem next line replaces the string 'in' with the string 'without' 
echo stripped %J:in=without%

Answer 4

Using the FOR command to strip the surrounding quotation marks is the most efficient way I've found to do this. In the compact form (Example 2) it's a one-liner.

Example 1: The 5-line (commented) solution.

REM Set your string
SET STR=" <output file>    (Optional) If specified this is the name of your edited file"

REM Echo your string into the FOR loop
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=*" %%A IN (`ECHO %STR%`) DO (
    REM Use the "~" syntax modifier to strip the surrounding quotation marks
    ECHO %%~A
)

Example 2: The 1-liner real-world example.

SET STR=" <output file>    (Optional) If specified this is the name of your edited file"

FOR /F "usebackq tokens=*" %%A IN (`ECHO %STR%`) DO @ECHO %%~A

I find it interesting that the inner echo ignores the redirection characters '<' and '>'.
If you execute ECHO asdfsd>asdfasd you will write file out instead of std out.

Hope this helps :)

Edit:

I thought about it and realized there is an even easier (and less hacky) way of accomplishing the same thing. Use the enhanced variable substitution/expansion (see HELP SET) like this:

SET STR=" <output file>    (Optional) If specified this is the name of your edited file"

ECHO %STR:~1,-1%

That will print all but the first and last characters (your quotation marks). I would recommend using SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION too. If you need to figure out where quotation marks are located in the string you can use FINDSTR to get the character #s.

Answer 5

This will turn "C:\Program Files\somefile.txt" into C:\Program Files\somefile.txt while still preserving cases such as Height=5'6" and Symbols="!@#

:DeQuote

SET _DeQuoteVar=%1
CALL SET _DeQuoteString=%%!_DeQuoteVar!%%
IF [!_DeQuoteString:~0^,1!]==[^"] (
IF [!_DeQuoteString:~-1!]==[^"] (
SET _DeQuoteString=!_DeQuoteString:~1,-1!
) ELSE (GOTO :EOF)
) ELSE (GOTO :EOF)
SET !_DeQuoteVar!=!_DeQuoteString!
SET _DeQuoteVar=
SET _DeQuoteString=
GOTO :EOF

Example

SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set _MyVariable = "C:\Program Files\ss64\"
CALL :dequote _MyVariable
echo %_MyVariable%

Answer 6

The above answer (starting with :DeQuote) assumes delayed environment variable expansion is set to on. From cmd /?:

Delayed environment variable expansion is NOT enabled by default. You can enable or disable delayed environment variable expansion for a particular invocation of CMD.EXE with the /V:ON or /V:OFF switch. You can enable or disable completion for all invocations of CMD.EXE on a machine and/or user logon session by setting either or both of the following REG_DWORD values in the registry using REGEDT32.EXE:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\DelayedExpansion

    and/or

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\DelayedExpansion

to either 0x1 or 0x0. The user specific setting takes precedence over the machine setting. The command line switches take precedence over the registry settings.

If delayed environment variable expansion is enabled, then the exclamation character can be used to substitute the value of an environment variable at execution time.