{"id":427,"date":"2019-12-22T17:51:29","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T17:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/?p=427"},"modified":"2019-12-22T17:51:30","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T17:51:30","slug":"powershell-may-spoil-command-line-arguments-when-running-external-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/powershell-may-spoil-command-line-arguments-when-running-external-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerShell may spoil command-line arguments when running external programs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nowadays, Windows PowerShell is considered as a replacement of the classic Windows Console (Command Prompt) utility. In Windows 10, it can be set as a default console in Win+X menu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In most cases, when you run command-line utilities from PowerShell and Command Prompt, they will behave exactly the same. However, we discovered that sometimes our command-line utilities work incorrectly when starting from PowerShell, while there are no problems with CMD. After researching, we found that PowerShell may modify command line parameters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote a simple program which displays its own command-line string:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

int main(int argc, char *argv[], char *envp[]) {\n\n\t_tprintf(_T(\"\\nCommand line: %s\\n\"), GetCommandLine());\n\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Let’s run\nthis program in Command Prompt and  PowerShell\nwith the following arguments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
param1\n“param2” ‘param3’ “param 4” ‘param 5’ “param\/6”\n‘param\/7’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
As you can see, the output of this program exactly matches the input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Surprise! PowerShell\nchanges command line by removing the quotation marks when an argument has no\nspace and replacing single quotes with the double quotes. And this may affect\nthird-party utilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why does\nPowerShell do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PowerShell\nis not just a console to run programs. It is a system to run scripts. And it\nconsiders strings enclosed in quotes as PowerShell strings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Workaround<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
First, if you come across such an issue, we recommend you contact the developers and report this issue. In our products, we will fix these incompatibility issues soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a\nworkaround, you can enclose double quotes inside single quotes or use two\nsequential double quotes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
All seems to be OK except ‘param 5’ parameter, but I believe It’s more important that param\/6 and param\/7 problems were fixed since they could conflict with command-line switches.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nowadays, Windows PowerShell is considered as a replacement of the classic Windows Console (Command Prompt) utility. In Windows 10, it can be set as a default console in Win+X menu In most cases, when you run command-line utilities from PowerShell and Command Prompt, they will behave exactly the same. However, we discovered that sometimes our command-line utilities work incorrectly when starting from PowerShell, while there\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[55],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eventlogxp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}