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From: sher@bbn.com (Lawrence D. Sher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Passing delimiters to a batch file
Keywords: batch
Message-ID: <60564@bbn.BBN.COM>
Date: 3 Nov 90 12:41:34 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.com
Reply-To: sher@BBN.COM (Lawrence D. Sher)
Distribution: na
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 28

I want to be able to call a batch file with arguments that contain
commas.  This over-ambitious goal has led me to discover that DOS uses
both spaces and commas (and any contiguous collection thereof) as
delimiters between arguments.
Thus, if test.bat is 
     echo %1
     echo %2
then at the DOS prompt
     test 3,4 (or test 3 4  or test 3,   4)
produces
     3
     4
That means that commas cannot be passed in as part of the arguments
unless they are specially sheltered or "escaped" somehow.  What I'd like
to do is have
     test "foo(3,4)" 5
echo
     foo(3,4)
     5
but of course it echoes
     "foo(3
     4)"
I can't find any way of doing this.  Is there any way?
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