How do I include ampersands in a powershell command in a batch file?

Question

I am trying to download a Google sheet via a batch file. This works:

powershell -Command "Invoke-WebRequest https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID/export?exportFormat=tsv -OutFile output.tsv"

When I specify which sheet/tab I want by adding &gid=1234, this breaks:

powershell -Command "Invoke-WebRequest https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID/export?exportFormat=tsv&gid=1234 -OutFile output.tsv"

The error is:

The ampersand (&) character is not allowed. The & operator is reserved for future use; wrap an ampersand in double quotation marks ("&") to pass it as part of a string.

How do I wrap the ampersand in quotes without breaking the outer quotes for the Command parameter?

Answer 1

The URL embedded inside the "..." string passed to powershell -Command must be quoted too , because an unquoted & has special meaning to PowerShell too (though in Windows PowerShell it is currently only reserved for future use; in PowerShell Core it can be used post-positionally to run a command as a background job).

The simplest option is to use embedded '...' quoting , as suggested by Olaf , because ' chars. don't need escaping inside "..." . '...' strings in PowerShell are literal strings, which is fine in this case, given that the URL contains no variable references.

powershell -Command "Invoke-WebRequest 'https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID/export?exportFormat=tsv&gid=1234' -OutFile output.tsv"

If embedded "..." quoting is needed for string interpolation, use \\" (sic) to escape the embedded ( " ) chars. (note that inside PowerShell, you'd need to use `" or "" instead):

powershell -Command "Invoke-WebRequest \"https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SPREADSHEET_ID/export?exportFormat=tsv&gid=1234\" -OutFile output.tsv"