Powershell command line argument with spaces and curly brackets?

Question

I am making an attempt at my first powershell script and getting a bad parameter error when running the following code. How can I pass the argument to the command in powersehll?

& "bcdedit" /store c:\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} device partition=C:

EDIT: The working code for this is:

& "bcdedit" /store c:\boot\bcd /set "{bootmgr}" device partition=C:

An unknown command was specified. Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance. — arynhard, Jun 01 '12 at 17:02
Figured it out. the {bootmgr} needs double quotes around it. — arynhard, Jun 01 '12 at 17:07

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 01 '12 at 23:01

5

The curly brackets threw everything off. Putting quotes around {bootmgr} fixed the problem.

& "bcdedit" /store c:\boot\bcd /set "{bootmgr}" device partition=C:

answered Jun 01 '12 at 23:01

arynhard

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 01 '12 at 18:09

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The problem you are running into is that the PowerShell parser works differently than the cmd.exe parser does. One way around this is to pass your command to cmd.exe and let it do the parsing.

To do this, pass the command to cmd.exe using the /c option as a single-quoted string.

cmd.exe /c 'bcdedit /store c:\boot\bcd /set {bootmgr} device partition=C:'

This method is especially useful when the command you are using requires string-quoted arguments.

answered Jun 01 '12 at 18:09

Tumba

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This is a great solution for so many issues with Powershell (especially if you are already invested in the old command line) – Froyke Apr 26 '13 at 00:03

Powershell command line argument with spaces and curly brackets?

2 Answers2

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