The documented way that double quotes work (on a Microsoft command-line to a C program) is that inside of double quotes, special characters aren't special except that \" becomes ", \\\" becomes \", and \\" becomes \ followed by the closing " (etc.) -- sequences of \s not immediately followed by a " are not changed.

It appears to me that Microsoft made some stab at also supporting "" inside of double quotes becoming " but that they have a few bugs in this code. Since I didn't find this behavior documented, I just avoid it and use \" when I want a " inside of double quotes and things are well behaved (as far as I've noticed) -- though the scheme leaves much to be desired.

                - tye

In reply to Re^4: Windows command line (use \") by tye
in thread Windows command line by dda

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