I am trying something like:
set pwd = abc&123
echo password %pwd%
I get the result as...
'123' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
password abc
Is the system like this or is there an escape for such characters?
What you need to do is wrap your password in double quotes like so:
set pwd="abc&123"
echo %pwd%
Let me know how it goes.
set "pwd=abc&123"
Commented
Feb 28, 2013 at 2:57
I found that it works best with a combination of both martineau's answer and mastashake57's answer.
set pwd=abc^&123
echo %pwd%
Still fails, and
set pwd="abc&123"
echo %pwd%
Adds quotes to it (you can't remove the quotes with a for loop or string manipultaion because it will fail again, thanks to the ampersand), which isn't that great.
However,
set "pwd=abc^&123"
echo %pwd%
Works perfectly.
Hope that helps.
pwd to abc^&123. Most of the time this is probably exactly what you need to do, but it could catch you out if you're not aware of what's happening.
Commented
Mar 10, 2013 at 10:27
/? only provides a summary, not comprehensive documentation.
Commented
Mar 10, 2013 at 19:59
From the command-line reference help file:
The ampersand (&), pipe (|), and parentheses ( ) are special characters that must be preceded by the escape character (^) or quotation marks when you pass them as arguments.
Seems like putting the whole password in quotation marks would be easier than escaping individual characters if there's more than two characters within it that need the treatment.
What you really need is:
set pwd=abc^^^&123
echo %pwd%
Or:
set "pwd=abc^&123"
echo %pwd%
Since & is a special char, you must escape it with ^, resulting in ^&.
Running set pwd=abc^&123 will set the variable to the value abc&123. After that, if you were to run echo %pwd%, you are effectively running echo abc&123.
Yet echo abc&123 doesn't work as you expect, because & is a special char. You can avoid this by adding quotes: echo "abc&123" but your output would have the quote chars too. In other words, using quotes isn't exactly a proper solution.
What you need is to escape the & char when you run the echo command:
echo abc^&123
So the variable needs to contain the value abc^&123. To set the variable to the value abc^&123, you would need to escape the special chars ^ and &, resulting in:
set pwd=abc^^^&123
I needed a solution for cases where the location of the & character is unknown, this seems to work for me:
set "pwd=abc&123"
set "EchoablePassword=%pwd:&=^&%"
echo password %EchoablePassword%
Not all commands requires the escape of the & character!!! For example the "if exist" command won't work if you escape the & character, but will work if you don't escape it. This is why I named the variable as "EchoablePassword" because in my code only echo requires the escape of "&".
