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POHow can I escape an arbitrary string for use as a command line argument in Windows?
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copied!<p>I have a list of strings and I want to pass those strings as arguments in a single Windows command line call. For simple alphanumeric strings it suffices to just pass them verbatim:</p> <pre><code>> script.pl foo bar baz yes no foo bar baz yes no </code></pre> <p>I understand that if an argument contains spaces or double-quotes, I need to backslash-escape the double-quotes and backslashes, and then double-quote the argument.</p> <pre><code>> script.pl foo bar baz "\"yes\"\\\"no\"" foo bar baz "yes"\"no" </code></pre> <p>But when I try to pass an argument with literal percent signs, this happens:</p> <pre><code>> script.pl %PATH% C:\Program Files\PHP\;C:\spaceless\perl\bin\;C:\Program Files\IBM\Java60\bin; (...etc.) </code></pre> <p>Double quoting doesn't work:</p> <pre><code>> script.pl "%PATH%" C:\Program Files\PHP\;C:\spaceless\perl\bin\;C:\Program Files\IBM\Java60\bin; (...etc.) </code></pre> <p>Nor does backslash-escaping (notice how the backslashes are present in the output):</p> <pre><code>> script.pl \%PATH\% \%PATH\% </code></pre> <p>Also, the rules are inconsistent for backslash-escaping backslashes:</p> <pre><code>> script.pl "\\yes\\" \\yes\ > script.pl "\yes\\" \yes\ > script.pl "\yes\" \yes" </code></pre> <p>Also, doubtless there are special characters in the Windows command line shell, much like there are in all shells. <strong>What, then, is the general procedure for safely escaping arbitrary command line arguments for use at the Windows command line?</strong></p> <p>The ideal answer will describe a function <code>escape()</code> which can be used in situations like the following (a Perl example):</p> <pre><code>$cmd = join " ", map { escape($_); } @args; </code></pre> <p>Here are some more example strings which should be safely escaped by this function (I know some of these look Unix-like, that's deliberate):</p> <pre><code>yes no child.exe argument 1 Hello, world Hello"world \some\path with\spaces C:\Program Files\ she said, "you had me at hello" argument"2 \some\directory with\spaces\ " \ \\ \\\ \\\\ \\\\\ "\ "\T "\\T !1 !A "!\/'" "Jeff's!" $PATH %PATH% & <>|&^ ()%!^"<>&| >\\.\nul malicious argument"&whoami *@$$A$@#?-_ </code></pre>

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