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

Brute force method:

echo "foo <3 bar" | sed -e 's/\(^"\|"$\)//g'

This requires finding a suitable Win32 version of sed, of course.

Answer 2

Daniel Budzyński's response is brilliant. It works even in situations where there are special characters in the output. For example:

C:\> for /f "usebackq tokens=2 delims=:" %i in (`%comspec%\..\ping -n 1 -w 200 10.200.1.1 ^| \
     findstr /c:"TTL="`) do echo|set /p="%i"

bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255

If you try tried a simple echo without the quotes, you get a error, due to the "<" in the variable:

C:\> set "output=bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255"
C:\> echo %output%
The system cannot find the file specified.

C:\> echo|set /p="%output%"
bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255

Answer 3

To remove all quotation marks from a set variable, you need Delayed Variable Expansion to securely expand the variable and process it. Expansion using percent signs (i.e. %VAR% and %1) are inherently unsafe (they are vulnerable to command injection; read this for details).

SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
SET VAR=A ^"quoted^" text.
REM This strips all quotes from VAR:
ECHO !VAR:^"=!
REM Really that's it.

To strip quotes from a text file or a command output, things will get complicated because with Delayed Expansion, string like !VAR! within the text document will get expanded (within the %%i expansion in FOR /F) when it shouldn't. (This is another vulnerability—information disclosure—that's not documented elsewhere.)

To safely parse the document, a switch between delayed-expansion-enabled and -disabled environment is needed.

REM Suppose we fetch the text from text.txt

SETLOCAL DisableDelayedExpansion
REM The FOR options here employs a trick to disable both "delims"
REM characters (i.e. field separators) and "eol" character (i.e. comment
REM character).
FOR /F delims^=^ eol^= %%L IN (text.txt) DO (

    REM This expansion is safe because cmd.exe expands %%L after quotes
    REM parsing as long as DelayedExpansion is Disabled. Even when %%L
    REM can contain quotes, carets and exclamation marks.
    SET "line=%%L"

    CALL :strip_quotes
    REM Print out the result. (We can't use !line! here without delayed
    REM expansion, so do so in a subroutine.)
    CALL :print_line
)
ENDLOCAL
GOTO :EOF

REM Reads !line! variable and strips quotes from it.
:strip_quotes
    SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
    SET line=!line:^"=!

    REM Make the variable out of SETLOCAL
    REM I'm expecting you know how this works:
    REM (You may use ampersand instead:
    REM `ENDLOCAL & SET "line=%line%"`
    REM I just present another way that works.)
    (
    ENDLOCAL
    SET "line=%line%"
    )
GOTO :EOF

:print_line
    SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
    ECHO !line!
    ENDLOCAL
GOTO :EOF

The delims^=^ eol^= in the code above probably needs explanation: This effectively disables both "delims" characters (i.e. field separators) and "eol" character (i.e. comment character). Without it, the "delims" will default to tab and space and "eol" defaults to a semicolon.

• The eol= token always read whichever the next character it is after the equal sign. To disable it this token has to be in the end of the options string so that no character may be used for "eol", effectively disabling it. If the options string is quoted, it might use quotation mark (") as the "eol", so we must not quote the options string.
• The delims= option, when it's not the last option in the options string, will be terminated by a space. (To include space in "delims" it has to be the last option of FOR /F options.) So delims= followed by a space and then another option disables the "delims".

Answer 4

The call command has this functionality built in. To quote the help for call:

 Substitution of batch parameters (%n) has been enhanced.  You can
 now use the following optional syntax:

 %~1         - expands %1 removing any surrounding quotes (")

Here is a primitive example:

@echo off
setlocal
set mystring="this is some quoted text"
echo mystring=%mystring%
call :dequote %mystring%
echo ret=%ret%
endlocal
goto :eof

:dequote
setlocal
rem The tilde in the next line is the really important bit.
set thestring=%~1
endlocal&set ret=%thestring%
goto :eof

Output:

C:\>dequote
mystring="this is some quoted text"
ret=this is some quoted text

I should credit the 'environment variable tunneling' technique (endlocal&set ret=%thestring%) to Tim Hill, 'Windows NT Shell Scripting'. This is the only book I have ever found that addresses batch files with any depth.

Answer 5

The following approach can be used to print a string without quotes:

echo|set /p="<h1>Hello</h1>"

pushing this string into file:

echo|set /p="<h1>Hello</h1>" > test.txt

To check:

type test.txt

Answer 6

I know that it is not actually for the author, but if you need to send some text to the file without quotes - the solution below works for me. You do not need to use quotes in the echo command, just surround the complete command with brackets.

(
    echo first very long line
    echo second very long line with %lots% %of% %values%
) >"%filename%"