CODEWITHSUNDEEP
for-loopcmdescaping
aschipfl
aschipfl

Reputation: 34909

How to escape exclamation mark from 'command' using FOR /F?

How can I, with delayed expansion enabled, escape the exclamation mark inside of a command that is stated as an argument of a FOR /F command, like

set FOO=BAR
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
rem non-quoted variable
for /F %L in ('echo !FOO!') do echo %L
endlocal

or

set FOO=BAR
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
rem quoted variable
for /F %L in ('echo "!FOO!"') do echo %L
endlocal

to get BAR or "BAR" returned, respectively? Unfortunately it is expanded to !FOO! or "!FOO!".

When using immediate expansion (meaning %FOO% or "%FOO%") I get what I want.

I tried to use ^!, ^^!, !!,..., also together with the "usebackq" option (`echo`), but no success. Even preceding the first echo with a call command does not succeed.

Can you please help me?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 473

Answers (1)

MC ND
MC ND

Reputation: 70923

From the syntax used (%L) you are running it in the command line, and from this context the command setlocal enabledelayedexpansion has no effect. If you read setlocal /? you will see this command is for batch files.

So, the real problem is that !FOO! is parsed as a literal as delayed expansion is not active (the default cmd configuration).

How to do it from command line? Enabling the delayed expansion for the cmd instance

set "FOO=bar"
cmd /v /c"for /F %L in ('echo !FOO!') do echo %L"

Note that the expansion of the !FOO! variable is done inside the cmd /v /c instance, not inside the cmd instance started to execute the echo command.

Upvotes: 4

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