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I see that the caret is the documented escape character, as usually the escape character, and the only thing that works as it normally.

But, I have an example showing that for the double quote character, ^ doesn't work and you have to use \

C:>runas /user:Administrator "cmd /k dir \"%userprofile%\""

Why is that? And, Where is it documented?

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One of the examples in RUNAS /? shows that syntax. The caret is the escape character for CMD.EXE but in Windows individual programs are free to implement their own escape characters and globbing.

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interesting.. and btw.. what is cmd.exe doing with the unescaped quotes at the end? does it keep them, if so why.. Or does it remove them.. if so, why were they needed in the first place? – barlop Aug 30 '10 at 10:22
@barlop: See Michael's answer. – Dennis Williamson Aug 30 '10 at 14:45
are you sure \" is being interpreted by runas and not by cmd.exe? compiling this w.c pastebin.com/28Q2Wxxr to w.exe Compare a)w "a a" b)w \"a a\" c)w ^"a a^" Notice what happens with b in particular. I guess that's the cmd shell treating \ as an escape character. – barlop Sep 13 '11 at 7:13
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The \ sign makes the interpreter interpret the next sign as a character instead of an identifier.

You see it a lot in code as well:

"Hello \"World\""

this is interpreted as

Hello "World"

in your example, in order to pass the arguments to cmd, it needs to be enclosed in "". But since the arguments to cmd contains " (and this would end the enclosure) they are appended by \. If the "" would not have been there, the /k dir \"%userprofile%\" would have been interpreted as arguments to runas, not to cmd.

The reason why they are enclosing the %userprofile% is because this is an environmental variable and will be replaced by text which could contain spaces, which (for the same reason as above) would make the argument to cmd incorrect.

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Looks to me like RunAs "needs" quotes when that second parameter, the program parameter, has a space. Otherwise it thinks it is being given more parameters than it is. In theory, runas could have been written(I mean coded) to take it to the end, as one parameter no quotes necessary. In contrast to this. cmd.exe e.g. cmd /c dir a b That takes -dir a b- as one parameter. – barlop Aug 30 '10 at 23:46
Also, a more complex point, it looks to me like runas could've done without \" But can't because it is taking the " as start and the next " as end. If it just took the outter-most ones as beginning and end, then it wouldn't need middle ones to be \" e.g. even a nasty looking line like this C:\>runas /user:Administrator "runas /user:Administrator \"cmd /k dir \"%userprofile%\"\" " If it were all " and no \" then theoretically you can still process it. But not so because of the way runas has been written. – barlop Aug 30 '10 at 23:50
@barlop: Don't think of cmd as the argument to runas, because it is not. The argument to runas is cmd /k dir \"%userprofile%\". I don't have the time now, but give me a couple of hours and I should be able to explain a simple C++ program to you and how those programs interpret arguments. I think it would be more clear. So, answer bound to change – Default Aug 31 '10 at 7:36
Actually I may understand and just wasn't clear. I'm aware of the main method and argsv. I heard that they take all arguments in their first element? is that right? Regarding me mentioning cmd.exe, there is an ambiguity whether I mean cmd.exe in that line, or the outter cmd.exe that the line is written in. The only time I mentioned cmd.exe in what I wrote in these comments, was cmd /c dir a b And i'm right that -dir a b- is 1 parameter. But I have been told(don't know if correctly) that all windows programs get all their args as 1 string, presumably argsv[0],then split it themselves – barlop Aug 31 '10 at 9:22
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@Michael, if you want it in Why form.. I could ask. Why is cmd /c dir a b interpreted like cmd /c "dir a b" Whereas with runas, the program parameter(See runas /?) wants quotes. I think runas could've easily been coded to not want them. Since looks to me like theoretically it shouldn't need them. – barlop Aug 31 '10 at 18:16
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