escaping DOS

[Kenneth Brody]

On 10/3/2012 3:55 PM, Ryan Powers wrote:
> Here's a new one in my big book of bugs. End-user created a Windows
> username, e.g. Jon&Jane
>
> Does anyone see a problem there? We have a program that calls filePro and
> uses the %tmp%, i.e. c:\users\Jon&Jane.
> It turns out that ampersands are illegal in DOS. I tried to escape it, as in
> Jon\&Jane but that doesn't work either. Are escapes even possible?
>
> I've posted here first since this might enlighten other filePro users.

NT's cmd.exe (used by XP, Vista, Windows 7, etc.) uses "&" as a command 
separator, like ";" on *nix.  There's nothing "illegal" about them in a 
filename.

     dir & echo hello & pause

Put the filename in quotes, which will also take care of spaces and other 
"problematic" punctuation.

-- 
Kenneth Brody