DOS work-around for the "&" character?

Question

DOS doesn't seem to deal well with the "&" character in a string. I'm trying to parse url's, many of which have one or more &'s. If I do something like:

    set var = "http://finance.yahoo.com/mbview/threadview/?v=m&bn=2"
    echo %var%
    pause

I get

ECHO is off. Press any key to continue . . .

Removing the & character rectifies this, which would be a suitable work-around, but I need to do this in code. Is there any help for this?

Are you really using `DOS` or are you talking about the commandline in Windows? — , Mar 03 '13 at 11:45

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 03 '13 at 12:50

2

You don't need to escape the ampersand when you use delayed expansion

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set "var=http://finance.yahoo.com/mbview/threadview/?v=m&bn=2"
Echo !var!

answered Mar 03 '13 at 12:50

jeb

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+1, You beat me this time :-) I was trying to write a full explanation. – dbenham Mar 03 '13 at 12:53
that worked. very nice. Thought I was sunk. – shockley Mar 04 '13 at 05:23
However, while this line works right: echo !str! > my.txt this one loses everything after the '&', including the '&': echo !str! | clip – shockley Mar 04 '13 at 07:13
`echo !str! > my.txt` works, but `echo !str! | clip` fails, as pipes create a new cmd.exe context, so the line is parsed twice. For more you should open a new question – jeb Mar 04 '13 at 08:06
Oh -- so you gave me a solution that only works once! LOL Seems like this is similar to the byval/byref scenariio. – shockley Mar 04 '13 at 12:25
No, my solution works. You didn't ask about pipes, in batch this makes a huge difference – jeb Mar 04 '13 at 13:38
didn't mean to sound ungrateful. May take a look at one of these interpreters under the hood. regards. – shockley Mar 04 '13 at 17:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 03 '13 at 11:46

1

If it is Windows Command line that must be what you are looking for.

set "var=http://finance.yahoo.com/mbview/threadview/?v=m^&bn=2"
echo %var%
pause

watch ^& in code

answered Mar 03 '13 at 11:46

Mahmut Ali ÖZKURAN

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That worked, too. Nice! Command Prompt language is gnarly. – shockley Mar 04 '13 at 05:25

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 03 '13 at 11:51

1

Remove the space between var and =:

set var="http://finance.yahoo.com/mbview/threadview/?v=m&bn=2"
echo %var%
pause

answered Mar 03 '13 at 11:51

Sergey Podobry

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actually, I only typed it wrong in the question box -- actual code was typed as you have it. Thanx. – shockley Mar 04 '13 at 05:24

DOS work-around for the "&" character?

3 Answers3