Windows mangles double quotes within single quotes in arguments #3425

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1. jetersen

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   bugSomething isn't workingSomething isn't working

   on Apr 15, 2021
2. mislav commented on Apr 15, 2021

   

   mislav

   on Apr 15, 2021

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   @jetersen For me this works without backslashes in both zsh and bash.

   Would you care to elaborate why do you think double quotes need to be escaped? Within single quotes, a double quote is a literal character without any special meaning, so I do not understand why escaping would be necessary.

   Additionally, if you find one of our examples to not be working, please point us to the example from our docs and the shell in which you've found it to not be working.

   Note that not all shells escape strings the same. We are aware that not all our examples work on cmd.exe, for example. However, it's hard (or impossible) to produce examples that work in every possible shell. We focus on POSIX-compatible shells, and Powershell when possible, for our examples.
3. mislav

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   more-info-neededMore info needed from user/contributorMore info needed from user/contributor

   on Apr 15, 2021
4. jetersen commented on Apr 15, 2021

   

   jetersen

   on Apr 15, 2021

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   Okay, I tested it, and it seems to be a PowerShell terminal thing.
   Tested on both PowerShell 5 and 7.
5. jetersen commented on Apr 15, 2021

   

   jetersen

   on Apr 15, 2021

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   Actually CMD does something completely different.

   Powershell:

   gh api orgs/anorg/repos --paginate --jq '[.[] | select(.default_branch == "master")] | map({ name: .full_name })' > test.json
   function not defined: master/0
   

   CMD:

   gh api orgs/anorg/repos --paginate --jq '[.[] | select(.default_branch == "master")] | map({ name: .full_name })' > test.json
   'select' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
   operable program or batch file.
   
6. jetersen commented on Apr 15, 2021

   

   jetersen

   on Apr 15, 2021

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   Powershell and github cli is behavior is not aligned.
   Based on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_quoting_rules?view=powershell-7.1
   None of the quoting works as expected.

   This includes powershell 7 on both Windows and Linux

   gh api orgs/anorg/repos --paginate --jq "[.[] | select(.default_branch == ""master"")] | map({ name: .full_name, branch: .default_branch })" > test.json
   function not defined: master/0

   gh api orgs/anorg/repos --paginate --jq "[.[] | select(.default_branch == `"master`")] | map({ name: .full_name, branch: .default_branch })" > test.json
   function not defined: master/0

   $str = @"
   [.[] | select(.default_branch == "master")] | map({ name: .full_name, branch: .default_branch })
   "@
   gh api orgs/anorg/repos --paginate --jq $str > test.json
   function not defined: master/0

   $str = @'
   [.[] | select(.default_branch == "master")] | map({ name: .full_name, branch: .default_branch })
   '@
   gh api orgs/anorg/repos --paginate --jq $str > test.json
   function not defined: master/0
7. mislav commented on Apr 15, 2021

   

   mislav

   on Apr 15, 2021

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   Ah, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

   The docs that you've linked to explicitly state that this is valid quoting style in powershell: 'hello "beautiful" soul'. The double quotes don't need to be escaped since they are within single quotes.

   However, when powershell runs an executable (gh being one) and passes arguments to it, it apparently mangles double quotes. Apparently this was known for a long time 🤦

   So I'm not sure what to do. How should we rewrite this example so that it works both for a POSIX shell and in Powershell with the same syntax?

   👍React with 👍1Reacted by DJ Adams
8. mislav

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   help wantedContributions welcomeContributions welcome

   docs

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   more-info-neededMore info needed from user/contributorMore info needed from user/contributor

   on Apr 15, 2021
9. jetersen commented on Apr 15, 2021

   

   jetersen

   on Apr 15, 2021

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   I was not aware of this issue in PowerShell 🤔
10. mislav

    changed the title [-]quotes inside jq need to be escaped with backslashes[/-] [+]Windows mangles double quotes within single quotes in arguments[/+] on May 25, 2021
11. jetersen commented on Jul 23, 2021

    

    jetersen

    on Jul 23, 2021

    Last edited by jetersen

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    Seems this is getting fixed in powershell though most likely only for powershell 7.2 and onward

    PowerShell/PowerShell#15408
12. mislav

    added

    priority-3Affects a small number of users or is largely cosmeticAffects a small number of users or is largely cosmetic

    on Nov 8, 2021
13. williamfigtree

    added a commit that references this issue on Mar 21, 2022

    fix can't migrate title with double quotes

    ...

    26028d0
14. samcoe

    added

    gh-apirelating to the gh api commandrelating to the gh api command

    on Oct 2, 2023
15. williammartin

    removed

    help wantedContributions welcomeContributions welcome

    on Feb 27, 2025