How do I escape "Quotes" in a powershell string?

Question

I need to send a simple string to a web api using Powershell, and I have to ensure the value in the HTML body has "Quotes" around it, because the content type has to be application/json.

For example:

$specialKey = "101010"
Invoke-RestMethod -Method Put `
                -Uri $keyAssignmentUri `
                -Header @{"content-type"="application/json"} `
                -Body "$specialKey"

When I inspect this call in Fiddler, I see that the body is 101010 instead of "101010". How do I send the body value with quotes?

Useful [blog on quotation marks](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2015/06/20/weekend-scripter-understanding-quotation-marks-in-powershell/) — henrycarteruk, Jun 30 '17 at 09:26
I wish PowerShell had Python like `r''` or `"""long multiline triple quote """`! — Rajesh Swarnkar, Mar 13 '23 at 14:17

score 35 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 26 '17 at 05:13

35

In order to have the "Quotes", you need to provide the escape character (`) before every " which you want to print or send.

$PrintQuotesAsString = "`"How do I escape `"Quotes`" in a powershell string?`"" 

Write-Host $PrintQuotesAsString 

"How do I escape "Quotes" in a powershell string?"

edited Jul 26 '17 at 05:13

henrycarteruk

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answered Jun 30 '17 at 09:29

Dipanjan Das

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Nice solution ! – M. Suurland Feb 16 '21 at 16:06

Mark Wragg · Accepted Answer · 2023-02-10T08:25:47.917

13

Assuming you don't need to do variable substitution in your string, a simple solution is to just surround it with single quotes to make it a literal string:

$specialKey = '"101010"'

edited Feb 10 '23 at 08:25

answered Jun 30 '17 at 07:19

Mark Wragg

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If you have variables in your string such as `$string = 'Found $count records in "test" file'` then this is not a solution as the variable value won't print to the string. Dipanjan's answer, below, works though. – n8. Jun 27 '22 at 18:34
1

I agree this shouldn’t be the accepted answer. It’s a potential solution for some scenarios but it’s not the right answer to the question. – Mark Wragg Jun 27 '22 at 18:37

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 22 '21 at 10:05

Replacing double quotes (") with a sequence of back-slash, backtick and double-quotes worked for me:

\`"

Example: I want to set (using the env command) an environment variable named SCOPES to the following value, then launch node app.js:

{
   "email":"Grant permissions to read your email address",
   "address":"Grant permissions to read your address information",
   "phone":"Grant permissions to read your mobile phone number"
}

so I used:

env SCOPES="{ \`"email\`": \`"Grant permissions to read your email address\`",   \`"address\`": \`"Grant permissions to read your address information\`",   \`"phone\`": \`"Grant permissions to read your mobile phone number\`" }" node app.js

References: http://www.rlmueller.net/PowerShellEscape.htm

How do I escape "Quotes" in a powershell string?

3 Answers3