CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
jesse_b
jesse_b

Reputation: 149

Powershell escape special characters in variable

I'm trying to perform a Copy-Item on a series of files and I'm noticing that files containing [ and ] that are not being copied, however I'm not receiving any error.

I'm using the following function:

function fsync ($source,$target) {

    $sourceFiles = @(Get-ChildItem -Path $source -Recurse | select -expand FullName)

    foreach ($f in $sourceFiles) {
        $destFile = $f.Replace($source,$target)
        $exist = Test-Path $destFile

        if ($exist -eq $false) {
            Write-Host "Copying: " $f "to: " $destFile
            Copy-Item -Path "$f" -Destination "$destFile"
        } else {
            Write-Host "File: " $f "Already exists"
        }
    }
}

Every time it's run it will print Copying: C:\Users\jesse_b\tmp\foo[1].txt to: C:\Users\jesse_b\tmp\test\foo[1].txt, and display no error, but the file never actually copies.

I've tried double quoting the variable names but it didn't make a difference.

When I manually copy files with [ and ] in them on the terminal it works as long as those characters are escaped. Is there something I must to do to have my variables treated as literal strings?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 430

Answers (1)

Elroy Flynn
Elroy Flynn

Reputation: 3218

Weird that it works that way, but I've seen similar results in my own experience.
Use -LiteralPath:

Copy-Item -LiteralPath $f.fullname -Destination "$destFile"

Upvotes: 1

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