3

I searched all over the internet for what this means: @”, including @ and ” individually.

It was in this code:

$Win32ShowWindowAsync = Add-Type –memberDefinition @” 
[DllImport("user32.dll")] 
public static extern bool ShowWindowAsync(IntPtr hWnd, int nCmdShow); 
“@ -name “Win32ShowWindowAsync” -namespace Win32Functions –passThru

I also keep on getting this error message for the first line above:

White space is not allowed before the string terminator.

I changed ” to ", but no luck.

So what do those symbols mean in Powershell?

Thanks

  • 1
    possible duplicate of [What does the "@" symbol do in Powershell?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/363884/what-does-the-symbol-do-in-powershell) – Jonathan May 02 '15 at 23:13
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    @Augwa that answer does not appear to cover the use of here-strings which is what it is doing here. – Matt May 02 '15 at 23:18

1 Answers1

10

You are looking at a here-string. The error is from a malformed here-string.

The code you have above copies and works just fine as is. The start must finish the line and the end of the here string must be alone on it's own line. Which they are in your code in the question. I can create your error by adding some spaces before the terminator "@. 

$Win32ShowWindowAsync = Add-Type –memberDefinition @”
[DllImport("user32.dll")] 
public static extern bool ShowWindowAsync(IntPtr hWnd, int nCmdShow); 
    “@ -name “Win32ShowWindowAsync” -namespace Win32Functions –passThru

I would double check the code you are actually using. Guessing you will find leading whitespace like the error is suggesting. There is a comment in the page you linked to that talks about removing that whitespace from the code. You copied and pasted from that site which had leading whitespace.

Taking a line from devcentral.f5.com

A here-string is used to embed large chunks of text inline in a script into a single string literal. This is very similar to a feature in C#, but the difference is that in PowerShell the here-string begins at the end of a line and the terminating sequence must be at the beginning of a line.

Using double quotes will allow for variable expansion whereas single quotes will not. Just like normal strings in PowerShell.

I also see smart quotes but, like you said, that didn't help when you changed them. In general keep an eye out for those.

Matt
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