Batch script: Pass returned GUID as URL parameter for desktop shortcut

Question

I'm trying to create desktop shortcuts to a private page we work with that will open in Edge, direct to a specific URL, and pass the GUID as a URL parameter.

I've tried the following but as you can expect, only the string "powershell" is passed on to the URL, not the returned GUID.

SET a=powershell -Command "[guid]::NewGuid().ToString()"
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start msedge "https://www.website.com/page?user="%a% --no-first-run

How can I replace the %a% portion of the URL with the returned contents of the system GUID?

powershell -Command "[guid]::NewGuid().ToString()"

Answer 1

Batch files (executed by cmd.exe ) have no concept of a what is known as command substitution in POSIX-compatible shells (a feature that PowerShell itself provides too, though it has no official name there): the ability to assign a command's output to a variable .

Instead, you must use a for /f loop to capture command output in a variable (which generally loops over each output line , but in your case there is only one output line):

@echo off & setlocal

:: Capture the output from a PowerShell command in variable %guid%, via 
:: a for /f loop:
for /f "usebackq delims=" %%a in (`powershell -Command "[guid]::NewGuid().ToString()"`) do set "guid=%%a"

:: Note: No need for `cmd /c` from a batch file to use `start`
start "" msedge "https://www.website.com/page?user=%guid%" --no-first-run

• Run for /? in a cmd.exe session for help.

• This answer discusses using for /f to capture command output in more detail; notably:

  • usebackq isn't strictly necessary here, but is generally advisable to give you the freedom to use both ' and " quoting in the command line being invoked.

  • Similarly, delims= isn't strictly necessary here, since the output by definition contains no spaces , but it is generally advisable if the intent is to capture an output line in full .

• The "" as the first start argument isn't strictly necessary here, but in general it is useful when invoking applications whose paths must be double-quoted. Without "" as the first argument, a double-quoted application path would be interpreted as starts window-title argument (which only meaningfully applies to console applications).

Answer 2

It is possible to do all of this directly using a PowerShell one-liner:

powershell -noprofile -command start msedge \"https://www.website.com/page?user=$(New-Guid) --no-first-run\"

• Passing -noprofile to powershell.exe is most of the time a good idea to reduce startup time and provide a more predictable environment as no user profile will be loaded.
• start is an alias for the Start-Process command.
• Here start gets passed two positional arguments, the name of the process to start ( -FilePath parameter) and the process's arguments as a single string ( -ArgumentList parameter). Therefore, the 2nd argument must be quoted. To pass the quotes from the command processor cmd.exe through to PowerShell, they must be backslash-escaped.
• Within the process's parameter string, the subexpression operator $(…) is used to call the New-Guid command inline and convert it to a string (by implicitly calling the .ToString() method of the Guid object it returns).
• If you actually need to use the GUID as a variable in other parts of your batch script (which is not clear from the question), then this helpful answer provides a solution.