How to use special characters from bat file in windows

Question

I need to open browser with special url that contains special characters (diacritics). For example "è" in url:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://google.com/search?q=Mèxico"

I could use urlencode, e.g. "https://google.com/search?q=M%C3%A8xico" but is it possible to do without escaping because it's the user who generate the bat. Something like @this_bat_uses_utf8 or something like that. Thanks.

The following code is returning empty string:

@echo off
setlocal
set "string=Trois-Rivières, QC"
:: Define simple macros to support JavaScript within batch
set "beginJS=mshta "javascript:code(close(new ActiveXObject('Scripting.FileSystemObject').GetStandardStream(1).Write("
set "endJS=)));""
:: FOR /F does not need pipe
for /f "tokens=" %%N in (
  '%beginJS% encodeURIComponent("%string%") %endJS%'
) do set encoded=%%N
echo %string% -^> %encoded%

Example 2: this not work, remove the è and it will start working

setlocal
chcp 65001 >nul
"C:/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe" --app="https://google.com/search?q=Trois-Rivières,QC"

Answer 1

There is no such directive for batch.

The most you can do is use chcp 65001 for UTF-8 and prepend a UTF-8 BOM to the .bat file.

For implementing urlencode in batch, see the script from a StackOverflow answer:

@echo off
setlocal

setlocal
set "string=Trois-Rivières, QC"
:: Define simple macros to support JavaScript within batch
set "beginJS=mshta "javascript:code(close(new ActiveXObject('Scripting.FileSystemObject').GetStandardStream(1).Write("
set "endJS=)));""
:: FOR /F does not need pipe
for /f "usebackq" %%N in (
  `%beginJS% encodeURIComponent('%string%') %endJS%`
) do set "encoded=%%N"
echo %string% -^> %encoded%

Answer 2

You can write a batch file that runs your code directly without any third party tools.

Store this code in a batch file encoded in UTF8 without BOM (when you have a BOM you should have an empty line at the top).

@echo off
setlocal

REM remeber the current code page
for /f "tokens=3 delims=:. " %%d in ('chcp') do set "_OLD_CP_=%%d"

REM set the code page to UTF8
chcp 65001 >nul

REM do the actual work (remove the 'start ""' if you want to wait for the end of the task)
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://google.com/search?q=Mèxico"

REM restore the old code page (if needed)
chcp %_OLD_CP_% >nul

Answer 3

@echo off 
 
>nul chcp 65001 & color 
for /f delims^= %%i in ('
powershell -nOp -c """$([uri]::EscapeDataString('Mèxico'))"""
   ')do "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" "https://google.com/search?q=%%~i"

---

• Porting your reference code for use with powershell

@echo off 

>nul chcp 65001 & color 
for /f delims^= %%i in ('
powershell -nOp -c """$([uri]::EscapeDataString('Trois-Rivières, QC'))"""
   ')do <con: echo\%%~i && set "_string=%%~i" && echo\%%~i>.\My_Output_File.log

• Output:

Trois-Rivi%C3%A8res%2C%20QC

• Online decoded:

---

• PowerShell one liner:

  $str="https://google.com/search?q=" + [uri]::EscapeDataString("Mèxico"); Start-Process -FilePath  "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" $str