Windows piping simple issue

Question

I want to do this:

echo < test > | more

This didn't work, so I tried this:

echo ^< test ^> | more

This didn't work either

What am I doing wrong?

PS.: I need the brackets to be printed. They part of the string I need.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 26 '14 at 20:37

1

More doesn't correctly parse escaped string, you need to go through some hops.

for /f "delims=" %a in ("^< test ^>") do echo %a | more

answered Mar 26 '14 at 20:37

Luiz Felipe

That is a fine solution, but the explanation is incorrect. MORE has no problem processing `<` and `>` characters. See [my answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/22673717/1012053) for a more accurate explanation. – dbenham Mar 26 '14 at 21:47

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

1

Because of how pipes are implemented by Windows CMD.EXE, the ECHO statement gets parsed twice, so the special characters must be escaped twice.

echo ^^^< test ^^^> | more

See Why does delayed expansion fail when inside a piped block of code? and all the answers for an in depth discussion of the many non-intuitive features of pipes.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:26

Community

answered Mar 26 '14 at 21:45

dbenham

2 Answers2