How to escape PowerShell double quotes from a .bat file

Question

I\'m trying to replace all double quotes in a file (temp1.txt) with two double quotes using this PowerShell command run from a bat file in Windows 7:

powersh         


        

Answer 1

Hm, here you need to escape the " on the command line, inside a double quoted string. From my testing, the only thing that seems to work is quadruple double quotes """" inside the quoted parameter:

powershell.exe -command "echo '""""X""""'"

So then your command line should be:

powershell -Command "(gc c:\temp\temp1.txt) -replace '""""', '""""""""' | Out-File -encoding UTF8 c:\temp\temp2.txt"

There is another way to handle this with PowerShell, assuming you don't want to just put these commands in a file and call it that way: use -EncodedCommand. This lets you base64 encode your entire command or script and pass it as a single parameter on the command line.

So here's your original command:

(gc c:\temp\temp1.txt) -replace '"', '""' | Out-File -encoding UTF8 c:\temp\temp2.txt

Here's a script to encode it:

$c = @"
(gc c:\temp\temp1.txt) -replace '"', '""' | Out-File -encoding UTF8 c:\temp\temp2.txt
"@
$b = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes($c)
$e = [System.Convert]::ToBase64String($b)

$e now contains:

KABnAGMAIABjADoAXAB0AGUAbQBwAFwAdABlAG0AcAAxAC4AdAB4AHQAKQAgAC0AcgBlAHAAbABhAGMAZQAgACcAIgAnACwAIAAnACIAIgAnACAAfAAgAE8AdQB0AC0ARgBpAGwAZQAgAC0AZQBuAGMAbwBkAGkAbgBnACAAVQBUAEYAOAAgAGMAOgBcAHQAZQBtAHAAXAB0AGUAbQBwADIALgB0AHgAdAA=

So your new command line can be:

powershell.exe -encodedCommand KABnAGMAIABjADoAXAB0AGUAbQBwAFwAdABlAG0AcAAxAC4AdAB4AHQAKQAgAC0AcgBlAHAAbABhAGMAZQAgACcAIgAnACwAIAAnACIAIgAnACAAfAAgAE8AdQB0AC0ARgBpAGwAZQAgAC0AZQBuAGMAbwBkAGkAbgBnACAAVQBUAEYAOAAgAGMAOgBcAHQAZQBtAHAAXAB0AGUAbQBwADIALgB0AHgAdAA=

There is no need to worry about escaping anything.

Answer 2

The escape character is grave-accent for PowerShell. Try this instead:

powershell -Command "(gc c:\temp\temp1.txt) -replace `", `"`" | Out-File -encoding UTF8 c:\temp\temp2.txt"