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For example, foo -option 10->30 file.ext (this is an actual syntax required) redirects the output to a file named 30. How do I make cmd understand that I would like to pass the actual > character? I've tried several forms of double quotes to no avail.

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3 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

The cmd escape character is ^ so:

foo -option 10-^>30 file.ext

should work for you

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I never would have known/guessed that - I still can't believe that someone is writing windows software the requires a reserved character. – mfinni Mar 26 '10 at 15:12
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@mfinni: I often use the caret as escape in a FOR loop containing pipe(s). Long live batch! :) – jscott Mar 26 '10 at 16:26
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@jscott - lets not start that craziness :) Powershell to the rescue. – MattB Mar 26 '10 at 18:35
@mfinni: It's perfectly normal in most other places (such as Linuxland). – grawity Mar 26 '10 at 20:19
@grawity - that's why I specified "windows software". I know that when you're doing stuff in shell/batch or via pipes or other weird-ish environments, even in windows, you have to escape a lot of things. But he just said he's using cmd - I never would have thought someone would purposefully write something that guaranteed wouldn't work from cmd. – mfinni Mar 26 '10 at 21:07
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up vote 1 down vote

You can also quote the argument:

foo -option "10->30" file.ext
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up vote 0 down vote

Ask the vendor for the foo command how it's supposed to work?

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−1. That's the shell and not the program doing something with the > here. – Joey Mar 27 '10 at 11:43
I understand that - I simply don't see a competent vendor writing software for windows with syntax that won't work out of the box on the default shell. Not sure the -1 is necessary. – mfinni Mar 27 '10 at 15:40

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