CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsbatch-filecygwin
pseudo
pseudo

Reputation: 848

calling batch file with semicolon in parameters from cygwin

I need to call a batch file from inside CYGWIN however one of it's parameters is a path-like string containing semicolons. Normally in windows command line one could enclose that parameter in quotes (which would need to be trimmed later on). However this approach doesn't wok in cygwin

Example batch (echoes first 3 parameters)

echo %1 
echo %2
echo %3

Windows cmd call

file.bat "a;b"  c

Ouput 

 "a;b"
 c
 empty

Cygwin call 

 ./file.bat "a;b" c

Output

 a
 b
 c

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2809

Answers (2)

David Dyck
David Dyck

Reputation: 128

Recent battles with quoting led me to another technique.

Create a temporary batch file and pass it to cmd. (I used "filex.bat" in this example).

echo 'call file.bat "a;b" c' > filex.bat ; cmd /c filex.bat ; rm filex.bat

Upvotes: 1

pseudo
pseudo

Reputation: 848

Including space anywhere inside quotes will ensure that parameter with semicolon or comma is passed correctly. Although I have to admit that I do not understand this behavior whatsoever, it seems to be working flawlessly.

./file.bat "a;b " c

Output

"a;b"
c

As @jeb mentioned in his comment, enclosing quotes can be trimmed by accessing parameter variable like this

 %~1

Upvotes: 7

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