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I am running a pipeline that uses a powershell script and I need to bind a tag I created to my Firestore database in Google Cloud Platform

the gcloud command to do this is as follows:

gcloud resource-manager tags bindings create --tag-value=$value --parent=//firestore.googleapis.com/projects/$projectID/databases/\(default\) --location=$location

I have tested this in Google CLI and it works. However when running it in my powershell script I am encountering the error below

 default\: /__w/1/build-bundle-00x-00x-general-extract/infra/00x-00x-general/.terraform/modules/gcp_firestore_enable_ttl/scripts/enable_ttl.ps1:60
 Line |
   60 |  … store.googleapis.com/projects/$projectID/databases/\(default\) --loca …
      |                                                         ~~~~~~~~
      | The term 'default\' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet,
      | function, script file, or executable program. Check the
      | spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that
      | the path is correct and try again.

I have tried the command using bash script and Google Command Line Interface and works as intended with no errors. I am only experiencing this error when using powershell script.

Pel - Beginner
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1 Answers1

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In PowerShell, only ` (the so-called backtick) serves as the escape character, not \.

  • That is, \ has no special meaning to PowerShell and is used verbatim.

Therefore, it must be `(default`), not \(default\) in order to designate the unquoted use of ( and ) as verbatim, i.e. to pass verbatim string (default):

# Note the `(default`) instead of `\(default\)`
gcloud resource-manager tags bindings create --tag-value=$value --parent=//firestore.googleapis.com/projects/$projectID/databases/`(default`) --location=$location

Alternatively, use quoting; since you're referencing a variable as part of the argument, you must use an expandable (double-quoted) string ("..."):

# "..." around the whole argument
gcloud resource-manager tags bindings create --tag-value=$value "--parent=//firestore.googleapis.com/projects/$projectID/databases/(default)" --location=$location

Note:

  • Partial quoting would work too; by quoting only the (default) part, you can use a verbatim (single-quoted) string ('...'):

    --parent=//firestore.googleapis.com/projects/$projectID/databases/'(default)'

  • However, note that this only works if the argument starts with an unquoted token (which is true here); see this answer for background information.

As for why PowerShell didn't choose \ as the escape character:

  • Since \ is the path separator on Windows (and PowerShell has Windows-only roots), this would have made specifying file-system paths quite cumbersome, due to the resulting need to escape such separators (e.g. C:\\Foo\\Bar to refer to C:\Foo\Bar). See the bottom section of this answer for a detailed discussion.
mklement0
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