What is the literal escape character in Powershell?

Question

When including a literal quote character inside a quoted string in Powershell, how do I escape the quote character to indicate it is a literal instead of a string delimeter?

Answer 1

From help about_quoting

You can nest double quotation marks in pairs of single quotation marks. The following example demonstrates how this feature can be used:

Write-Host 'As they say, "live and learn."'

The output from this command is:

As they say, "live and learn."

You can also nest single quotation marks within pairs of double quotation marks.

By using the ` escape character, you can preserve a quotation mark of the same type within a pair, as shown:

Write-Host 'It`'s easy to write literal statements in PowerShell.'

It's easy to write literal statements in PowerShell.

Answer 2

The escape character in Powershell is the "`" (backward apostrophe/grave).

This can be used to escape quotes and also special characters (e.g., tab is `t).

Answer 3

To compliment what has already been provided here, you should also know that you can escape a quote (single or double) with the quote itself. That means you can do this:

"Here's an example of a ""double-quoted string""."

and this:

'This time it''s ''single-quoted''.'

The advantage this syntax provides is simple: it's easier to type the same quote twice than it is to escape a quote with a backtick.