Windows – How to deal with quote characters when using cmd.exe

command linewindows

I'm trying to do this:

cmd.exe /C "C:\Program Files\Somewhere\SomeProgram.exe" > "C:\temp\Folder Containing Spaces\SomeProgram.out"

However, I have problems which are down to the way cmd.exe works. If you read the help for it, it handles " characters in a special way. See the help at the end of question. So, this doesn't execute correctly… I'm guessing cmd.exe strips some quotes which makes the statement ill-formed.

I can do this successfully:

// quotes not required around folder with no spaces
cmd.exe /C "C:\Program Files\Somewhere\SomeProgram.exe" > C:\temp\FolderWithNoSpaces\SomeProgram.out

But, I really need the first one to work. Is there away around the strange quote processing that cmd.exe uses? I want it to preserve all of the quotes, but there doesn't appear to be an option to make it do that.

Help taken from output of: cmd /?

If /C or /K is specified, then the remainder of the command line after
the switch is processed as a command line, where the following logic is
used to process quote (") characters:

1.  If all of the following conditions are met, then quote characters
    on the command line are preserved:

    - no /S switch
    - exactly two quote characters
    - no special characters between the two quote characters,
      where special is one of: &<>()@^|
    - there are one or more whitespace characters between the
      the two quote characters
    - the string between the two quote characters is the name
      of an executable file.

2.  Otherwise, old behavior is to see if the first character is
    a quote character and if so, strip the leading character and
    remove the last quote character on the command line, preserving
    any text after the last quote character.

Best Answer

Ah. doh. Think I've answered my own question.

If you use /S, and wrap the whole thing in quotes, it just removes those outer quotes.

cmd.exe /S /C " do what you like here, quotes within the outermost quotes will be preserved "
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