Hi there, I'm a newbie to PowerShell (and novice to general scripting)-- I'm writing a script to deploy code to our websites... I'm basically doing a "Copy-item..." of each file.

So far so good with my script but I notice the script doesn't like a space in the folder or filename.  I need to be able to insert a double quote at the beginnign of the string and at the end of the string so that when the "Copy-Item" looks at the source full filename, it won't choke on spaces in the folder or filename.

My questions are this:
(1) how do I insert a double quote into the string?
(2) what is the syntax to insert the double quote at the beginning of the string and at the end of the string ?

Thanks... as I write more scripts, it helps build up my skills.

Glad you found us. You probably do not need to worry about this. If you rely on passing the file objects rather than the file names, then the problem goes away. For example:



If you really do need to work with the filenames in the way you describe, then do something like this:

copy-item -path "$filename" -dest $path

Does that help?

halr9000, thanks for the quick response. 

lol -- that sounds pretty darn easy.  I think that should work.

thanks again

Hal is of course completely right about how to handle file/path names. Just to help with the learning though, here are some ways to add double quotes if you ever need to for some other reason:

Let's make a variable named $foo and stick a string in it:
$foo = "This is my string"

If we write this out to the command line we get the string with no quotes of course:
Write-Host $foo
this is my string

Double quotes cause variables to be interpolated, so:
Write-Host "$foo"
This is my string

To add double quotes, one method is to use the escape character within other double quotes. In PS, the ` (grave) is the escape character, so:
Write-Host "`"$foo`""
"This is my string"

The single quote character will generate a string without interpolating the variable, so:
Write-Host '$foo'
$foo

One more way to get double quotes around your string is to use the string formatting that is built into the string object in .Net. So:
Write-Host ('"{0}"' -f $foo)


Hope this helps.