Escape double quote in VB string

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Escaping quotes in VB6 or VBScript strings is simple in theory although often frightening when viewed. You escape a double quote with another double quote.

An example:

“c:\program files\my app\app.exe”

If I want to escape the double quotes so I could pass this to the shell execute function listed by Joe or the VB6 Shell function I would write it:

escapedString = """c:\program files\my app\app.exe"""

How does this work? The first and last quotes wrap the string and let VB know this is a string. Then each quote that is displayed literally in the string has another double quote added in front of it to escape it.

It gets crazier when you are trying to pass a string with multiple quoted sections. Remember, every quote you want to pass has to be escaped.

If I want to pass these two quoted phrases as a single string separated by a space (which is not uncommon):

“c:\program files\my app\app.exe” “c:\documents and settings\steve”

I would enter this:

escapedQuoteHell = """c:\program files\my app\app.exe"" ""c:\documents and settings\steve"""

I’ve helped my sysadmins with some VBScripts that have had even more quotes.

It’s not pretty, but that’s how it works.

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