What is the way to escape colon in powershell?

Question

I have the following powershell in a script file:

cd "$env:systemdrive:\$env:APPDATA\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"

Expanded, I want this to do something similar to this:

cd "C:\Users\Bob\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\f1wkii3l.default"

But when I run it, I get:

cd : Cannot find drive. A drive with the name '\\C' does not exist.

I am guessing the colon I put in there to be at the end of C:\\ is causing problems.

I tried:

cd "${env:systemdrive}:\${env:APPDATA}\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"

But then I get the error:

cd : Cannot find a provider with the name 'C'.

How can I escape the colon so that powershell just sees it as normal text?

NOTE: I looked at this question: Escaping a colon in powershell and the answer is all about .NET and does not answer my question (though the question is very similar).

Answer 1

You don't need to escape anything there. The APPDATA environment variable already includes the drive, so you only need

cd "${env:APPDATA}\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"

${env:systemdrive}:\\${env:APPDATA} would create a path C:\\C:\\Users\\... , which is indeed invalid.

Answer 2

If you write-host those environmental variables, you'll see that:

PS C:\>write-host $env:systemdrive
C:

PS C:\>write-host $env:appdata
C:\Users\****\AppData\Roaming

So your current attempt expands to C:C:\\Users\\****\\AppData\\Roaming\\... So all you need is the command:

cd "$env:Appdata\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"

Answer 3

Other answers are valid for troubleshooting and for your task at hand. One suggestion I have, and what I consider a best-practice, is making use of Join-Path anytime you are dealing with paths so you don't have to worry about trailing or beginning path separators.

This example

$d1 = "${env:APPDATA}\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"
$d2 = Join-Path ${env:APPDATA} "\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"
$d3 = Join-Path ${env:APPDATA} "Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default"
Write-Output "d1 = '$d1'"
Write-Output "d2 = '$d2'"
Write-Output "d3 = '$d3'"

Produces

d1 = 'C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default'
d2 = 'C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default'
d3 = 'C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\*.default'

All are acceptable, and I would tend to use the d3 version in my own scripts.