Pass argument from Powershell to Batch script - windows

I need to pass a password with special characters from powershell script automation.ps1 to batch script batch_script.bat which pipes it to main.py. Piping from batch_script.bat to main.py works fine, that is authentication succeeds. However, when I run the entire procedure described above, authentication fails, but echoing the password shows the correct password string.
My guess is that there are issues with special characters. What is a safe way to pass these strings?
Background
I want to automate the daily download from some external source via a Python script main.py. This process requires a password. So I wrote a batch_script.bat which pipes the password to the Python script when prompted for it. However, I don't want to store the password as plain text in the batch script, so I encrypted the password and wrote another layer automation.ps1 which decrypts the password and passes it as plain text to batch_script.bat.
automation.ps1
# get password
$securePassword = Get-Content "<file_path>" | ConvertTo-SecureString
$credentials = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PsCredential("<user_name>",$securePassword)
$unsecurePassword = ($credentials).GetNetworkCredential().Password
# call script
$script = "<path>\batch_script.bat"
$args = #("`"<user name>`"","`"$unsecurePassword`"")
start-process $script $args
batch_script.bat
(I am aware that in this example I discard the passed username, just wanted to preserve the fact that I pass multiple arguments in case there is any relevance to it)
#echo off
SET username=%~1
SET password=%~2
echo(%password%|python main.py

With following, all special characters should be handled very well. If any character required to be escaped, check this
$pass could be any string but check for special characters of powershell
$pass="%^&<>|'\``,;=(\)![]\/";
# Wait till it ends with -Wait when using -NoNewWindow.
# It may be comprehensible to use `" instead of "" to denote we are enclosing string in quotes.
(thanks #mklement0 for elaboration).
start-process -Wait -NoNewWindow .\script.cmd "`"$pass`""
script.cmd
setlocal
rem Remove Double quotes
set "arg=%~1"
rem Test result with base64 encoding
echo|set/p="%arg%"|openssl base64
rem echo is used with set/p to prevent trailing new line.
echo|set/p="%arg%"|python main.py
rem Test with following, argument is in double quotes
rem script "%^&<>|'\`,;=(\)![]\/"
rem Expected result
rem %^&<>|'\`,;=(\)![]\/

tl;dr:
Unless you specifically need the batch file to run in a new window, avoid Start-Process (whose built-in aliases are start and saps), and invoke the batch file directly.
To avoid problems with special characters in $unsecurePassword, do not pass it as an argument, pass it via stdin (the standard input stream), which your batch file will pass through to your python script:
automation.ps1:
# ...
$script = "<path>\batch_script.bat"
# Pass the password via *stdin*
$unsecurePassword | & $script 'userName'
Note: It is the $OutputEncoding preference variable that controls what character encoding PowerShell uses for sending text to an external program's stdin. In Windows PowerShell, that variable defaults to ASCII(!) encoding, meaning that any characters outside the 7-bit ASCII-range of Unicode characters, such as accented characters, are unsupported (they turn to literal ?); fortunately, PowerShell [Core] v6+ now defaults to UTF-8. Assign the required encoding to $OutputEncoding as needed.
batch_script.bat:
#echo off
SET username=%~1
REM The batch file will pass its own stdin input through to Python.
python main.py
Read on for background information.
Invoking a batch file from PowerShell:
Unless you truly need to launch a batch file in a new window, the best approach is to invoke it directly from PowerShell; that way, it runs:
in the same console window, synchronously.
with its output streams connected to PowerShell's (which allows you to capture or redirect the output).
Because your batch-file path is stored in a variable, direct invocation requires use of &, the call operator:
# Note: The " chars. around $unsecurePassword are only needed if the variable
# value contains cmd.exe metacharacters - see next section.
& $script 'userA' `"$unsecurePassword`"
Start-Process is usually the wrong tool for invoking console applications, batch files, and other console-based scripts; see this answer for more information.
If you do need the batch file to run in a new window (which is only an option on Windows), use Start-Process as follows (the command will execute asynchronously, unless you also pass -Wait):
# The string with the arguments to pass is implicitly bound
# to the -ArgumentList parameter. Use only " for embedded quoting.
Start-Process $script "userA `"$unsecurePassword`""
Note: While the (implied) -ArgumentList (-Args) parameter is array-valued ([string[]]) and passing the arguments individually is arguably the cleaner approach, this generally does not work properly, due to a longstanding bug that probably won't get fixed; for instance,
Start-Process foo.exe -Args 'one', 'two (2)' passes 3 arguments rather than 2; that is, it passes single string 'two (2)' as two arguments - see this GitHub issue.
Therefore, it is ultimately simpler and more predictable to pass a single argument with embedded quoting to -ArgumentList, but be sure to use only " (not ') for embedded quoting:
Start-Process foo.exe -Args "one `"two (2)`""
Passing arguments robustly to cmd.exe / batch files:
Note:
The limitations of cmd.exe (the legacy command processor that interprets batch files) prevent fully robust solutions; notably, you cannot prevent the interpretation of tokens such as %foo% as environment-variable references when you call a batch file from PowerShell (at least not without altering the argument to %foo^%, which will retain the ^).
In your specific case, since you're trying to echo an argument unquoted, embedded double quotes (") in such an argument - which need to be escaped as "" - aren't properly supported: they are passed through as "".
Passing an unquoted argument to cmd.exe / a batch file breaks, if that argument contains one of cmd.exe's metacharacters, i.e., characters with special syntactic meaning; in this context, they are: & | < > ^ "
The solution is to enclose the argument in double quotes ("..."), with the added need to double " chars. that are embedded (a part of the value).
PowerShell, after performing its own parsing of the command line (notably evaluating variable references and expressions), constructs the command line that is ultimately used to invoke the external target program, behind the scenes.
However, it only automatically double-quotes an argument if it contains spaces, not if it only contains cmd.exe metacharacters; e.g., a variable with verbatim string content two (2) is passed double-quoted - $val = 'two 2'; .\foo.bat $val results in command line .\foo.bat "two 2" - whereas string content a&b is not - $val = 'a&b'.\foo.bat $val results in .\foo.bat a&b - which breaks.
The solution - as shown in your question - is to enclose the variable reference in literal, embedded " characters, because such a "pre-quoted" value instructs PowerShell to pass the value as-is:
$val = 'a&b'; .\foo.bat `"$val`" results in .\foo.bat "a&b"
Note: .\foo.bat "`"$val`"" has the same effect; I'm taking advantage of the fact that PowerShell in argument (parsing) mode (generally) implicitly treats arguments as if they were double-quoted; in expression (parsing) mode, such as in the array-construction statement in the question (#(..., ...)), you do need the "`"$val`"" form.
The problem with your specific batch file:
A properly "..."-enclosed argument (with any embedded " chars. escaped as "") is properly seen as a parameter (e.g., %1) inside a batch file.
However, it is seen with the enclosing double quotes and with any doubled embedded " chars.
If you were to pass this parameter to the target program (python in this case) as an argument, everything would work as expected.
However, since you're passing the value via stdin using echo, you need to strip the enclosing double quotes so that they're not passed as part of the value, which is what your batch file attempts (e.g., %~2)
However, passing the stripped value causes the echo command to break.
There is no good solution to this problem with echo, short of performing cumbersome explicit ^-escaping (^ being cmd.exe's escape character):
$escapedUnsecurePassword = $unsecurePassword -replace '[&|<>^]' -replace '"', '""'
& $script 'userA' `"$escapedUnsecurePassword`"
That alone still isn't enough, however - your batch_script.bat file needs a modification too:
Because the assignment itself in your SET password=%~2 command isn't protected with double quotes, it breaks with values that contain metacharacters; somewhat paradoxically, you must use the form SET "password=%~2" in order to safely strip the embedded enclosing " chars.:
#echo off
REM Strip the enclosing "..." from the arguments (%~<n>)
REM !! The *assignment itself* must be in "..." so that
REM !! it does not break if the value has cmd.exe metacharacters.
set "username=%~1"
set "password=%~2"
echo(%password%|python main.py
Note that that will work as intended for all metacharacters except the - of necessity doubled - embedded ", which are passed through as "".
However, there is a workaround for echoing a string with metacharacters unquoted, as also demonstrated in subcoder's helpful answer:
If you define batch_script.bat as follows:
#echo off
set "username=%~1"
REM Do NOT strip quotes from the password argument
set password=%2
REM Using a trick with set /p, echo the password unquoted.
REM Note: Put the "|" directly after the ":" to avoid trailing spaces.
<NUL set /p=%password% & echo:|python main.py
The workaround repurposes set's /p option, which accepts a prompt message to print when interactively prompting the user for a value and prints the message without quotes; the actual interactive prompt is suppressed via <NUL, so that only the message is printed.
echo: prints a newline (line break), which is necessary, because the set /p command prints its message without a trailing newline (if you don't want to send a newline, simply omit & echo:).
Caveat: In addition to the problem with embedded "" applying here too, this workaround has a side effect: it trims leading whitespace; e.g., " foo " results in output foo   (only trailing whitespace is preserved); however, given that arguments with leading whitespace are rare, this may not matter in practice.
Given how cumbersome / obscure the above approaches are, the stdin-based approach shown at the top is preferable.

You pass arguments to batch files in powershell using the -argumentlist switch of start/saps. For you you could use:
saps "$script" -argumentlist $args
But I would suggest first breaking $args up as it may not work since to pass arguments, you usually want to pass the arguments one at a time like:
saps "$script" -argumentlist "1","2","3"
Passing $args will work most of the time, but there are some cases where where it won't work. Most of the time you are fine though

Related

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

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()"
Note:
This answer addresses the question as asked: it captures the output from a PowerShell command in a batch-file variable for later use in the same batch file.
Alternatively, the specific task at hand can also be performed in full by a single PowerShell command, as shown in zett42's helpful answer.
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.[1]
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
Note: setlocal, while not strictly necessary, localizes any variable definitions to the batch file at hand.
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).
[1] In POSIX-compatible shells, use $(...) (e.g, captured="$(whoami)"). In PowerShell, you can use the command -as-is as the RHS of the assignment (e.g., $captured = whoami)
It is possible to do all of this directly using a PowerShell one-liner:
powershell -noprofile -command start msedge \"https://www.website.com/page?user=$(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.

How to include double quote in Matlab's system() command

I need to pass filename as input to a powershell command which includes spaces. Hence I am hoping to include double quotes.
However, Matlab "eats" all double quotes in the input of system() when passing arguments to powershell.
For example, note how the examples below all the the same output.
>> system('powershell.exe echo a c','-echo')
a
c
ans =
0
>> system('powershell.exe echo "a c"','-echo')
a
c
ans =
0
>> system('powershell.exe echo ""a c""','-echo')
a
c
ans =
0
>> system(['powershell.exe echo ',char(34),'a c',char(34)],'-echo')
a
c
ans =
0
The actual output for echo "a c" in powershell is a c in a single line. The change of line only occurs without double quotes.
Just for experiment, I also tried ""a c"" and the expected input is the same as change line, a, change line, c. With the return, it seems that any and all double quotes are "eaten" alive by Matlab.
How do I bring the double quotes back when using system()?
It is PowerShell that is eating your double quotes:
You're passing a command (piece of PowerShell code) to the PowerShell CLI, via the -Command (-c) parameter (which is positionally implied in your case).
" characters that should be considered part of the command must be escaped as \" (sic)
The reason that unescaped " don't work is that PowerShell considers them to have syntactic function on the command line only - they are simply stripped after all arguments have been parsed; the resulting tokens are then joined with spaces, and the resulting string finally interpreted as PowerShell code.
While using just \" in your command would fix the problem, it is advisable to also enclose the entire command being passed in "...", because that prevents potentially unwanted whitespace normalization.
system('powershell.exe " echo \"a c\" "', '-echo')
Caveat:
Since MatLab's system() function executes the given command line via cmd.exe (which is inefficient in your case, since you don't need shell functionality), use of \" can break the invocation, due to how cmd.exe's parses command lines.
To avoid edge cases when cmd.exe is involved, enclose the overall command in "...." and escape pass-through " as follows:
Use "^"" (sic) when calling powershell.exe (the Windows PowerShell CLI)
Use "" when calling pwsh.exe (the PowerShell (Core) 7+ CLI).
See this answer for more information.

proper way to remove double quotes from string in batch

I've got a batch script (app1.bat) calling another batch script (app2.bat) which itself calls a program in windows (program.exe).
app2.bat calls program.exe with a parameter after a flag in this way:
program.exe -f Parameter with whitespaces coming into the program
What I want to do is to pass the phrase that comes to program.exe from app1.bat into app2.bat but i don't know how to properly handle the doublequotes. Currently I am passing the phrase from app1.bat to app2.bat in double quotes and inside an app2.bat (prior to executing program.exe) I get rid of the quotes like that:
inside app1.bat
call app2.bat "Parameter with whitespaces coming into the program"
inside app2.bat
set old_phrase=%1%
set new_phrase=%old_phrase:"=%
program.exe -f %new_phrase%
old_phrase is
"Parameter with whitespaces coming into the program"
and new_phrase I end up with is
Parameter with whitespaces coming into the program
Is there any standard way to handle such a situation (being passing a string to an external program which expects a tring without quotes and being ok with whitespaces, whereas batch does not allow for no-quotes-and-whitespaces strings)
When you execute call /? from cmd to launch the help you will see quite a bit around expansion of %n
The first one states:
%~1 - expands %1 removing any surrounding quotes (")
You can therefore dump all the other set commands and simply run this in your batch file:
program.exe -f %~1

Why does invoke operator (&) and Invoke-Expression produce different results for the same input?

From my understanding, the invoke operator (&) and the Invoke-Expression cmdlet should behave similar. However, as can be seen below, this is not the case:
PS C:\Users\admin> powershell -Command "& {""([Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString([Convert]::FromBase64String('ZWNobyAnaGVsb
G93b3JsZCc=')))""}"
echo 'helloworld'
PS C:\Users\admin> powershell -Command "IEX ""([Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString([Convert]::FromBase64String('ZWNobyAnaGVs
bG93b3JsZCc=')))"""
helloworld
Here, 'ZWNobyAnaGVsbG93b3JsZCc=' is the Base64 encoded string "echo helloworld".
Can someone clarify?
Invoke-Expression (whose built-in alias is iex) and &, the call operator, serve different purposes:
Invoke-Expression evaluates a given string as PowerShell source code, as if you had executed the string's content directly as a command.
As such, it is similar to eval in bash and therefore only to be used with input that is fully under the caller's control or input that the caller trusts.
There are often better solutions available, so Invoke-Expression should generally be avoided
& is used to invoke a command (& <nameOrPath> [...]) or a script block (& { ... } [...]):
Neither case involves evaluating a string as source code.
In the case at hand:
The core of your command is the following expression, which returns the string
"echo 'helloworld'" (its content doesn't include the enclosing " - this is simply the representation of the resulting string as a PowerShell string literal):
[Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString([Convert]::FromBase64String('ZWNobyAnaGVsbG93b3JsZCc='))
Also note that, due to how the command line is parsed, the ""..."" surrounding the core expression in your original commands are effectively ignored, which explains why the expression is executed rather than being treated as the content of a string.[1]
Therefore, your two commands amount to:
& { "echo 'helloworld'" }
& executes the statement inside the script block, which happens to be a string, and a string by itself - if it isn't assigned to a variable or redirected elsewhere - is simply output as-is.
In this case, the command is effectively the same as just executing "echo 'helloworld'" by itself (including the enclosing ", which you can think of as
echo "echo 'helloworld'"), so echo 'helloworld' prints to the console.
Note that echo is a built-in alias for the Write-Output cmdlet, whose explicit use is rarely necessary: Return values from commands or expressions are implicitly output, if they are not captured in some form, as in this case, where executing a string by itself as a statement simply outputs the string. (You can try this by submitting just 'hi' at the prompt, for instance).
iex "echo 'helloworld'"
This makes iex (Invoke-Expression) evaluate the string's content as source code, which therefore executes echo 'helloworld', which prints helloworld to the console.
[1] Optional reading: PowerShell quoting woes when calling external programs
Note:
Handling of quoting with respect to external programs or when calling from an external programs is not part of the official documentation, as far as I can tell (as of this writing, neither about_Parsing nor about_Quoting_Rules nor about_Special_Characters mentions it - I've opened this issue on GitHub to address that).
There are flaws in the existing handling, but they cannot be fixed without breaking backward compatibility.
When calling from PowerShell, the best approach is to use a script block, which bypasses the quoting problems - see below.
Even though you correctly embedded " by escaping them as "" inside the overall "..." string from a PowerShell-internal perspective, additional escaping of " with \ is needed in order to pass them through to an external program, even if that external program is another instance of PowerShell called via powershell.exe.
Take this simplified example:
powershell.exe -command " ""hi"" " # !! BROKEN
powershell.exe -command ' "hi" ' # !! BROKEN
PowerShell-internally, " ""hi"" " and ' "hi" ' evaluate to a string with literal contents  "hi" , which, when executed, prints hi.
Regrettably, PowerShell passes this string to powershell.exe as " "hi" " - note how the "" turned into plain " and the enclosing single quotes were replaced with double quotes - which effectively results in  hi  after parsing by the new instance (because " "hi" " is parsed as the concatenation of substrings " ", hi, and " "), so PowerShell ends up trying to execute a (presumably nonexistent) command named hi.
By contrast, if you manage to pass the embedded as " as \" (sic) - after meeting PowerShell's own escaping needs - the command works as intended.
Therefore, as stated, you need to combine PowerShell-internal escaping with for-the-CLI escaping in order to pass an embedded ", so that:
inside overall "...", each embedded " must be escaped as \"" (sic) or \`" (sic)
inside overall '...', \" can be used as-is.
powershell.exe -command " \""hi\"" " # OK
powershell.exe -command " \`"hi\`" " # OK
powershell.exe -command ' \"hi\" ' # OK
Alternatively, use a script block instead of a command string, which bypasses the quoting headaches:
powershell.exe -command { "hi" } # OK, but only works when calling from PS
Note that the script-block technique only works when calling from PowerShell, not from cmd.exe.
cmd.exe has its own quoting requirements:
Notably, cmd.exe only supports "" for embedding double quotes (not also `"); thus, among the solutions above, only
powershell.exe -command " \""hi\"" " works from cmd.exe (a batch file) without additional escaping.
The down-side of \"", however, is that runs of interior whitespace between \""...\"" are collapsed to a single space each. To avoid that, use \"...\", but cmd.exe then sees substrings between the \" instances as unquoted, which would cause the command to break if that substring contained metacharacters such as | or &; e.g., powershell.exe -command " \"a|b\" "; to fix that you must individually ^-escape the following characters: & | < > ^
powershell.exe -command ' "hi" ' is similarly brittle, because cmd.exe doesn't recognize ' as a string delimiter, so any metacharacters outside embedded "..." are again interpreted by cmd.exe itself; e.g., powershell.exe -command ' "hi" | Measure-Object '
Finally, using just "" from cmd.exe for embedding " sometimes works, but not reliably; e.g., powershell.exe -command " 'Nat ""King"" Cole' " prints Nat "King Cole (the closing " is missing).
This appears to have been fixed in PowerShell Core.

Find string which include "%" with findstr

Im making a bat-file for windows that will run a simulation.
It will then look at the result in the console and search for the string "win%".
Ftm I can find anything including win but that gives me alot of unnessesary data.
This is what I got now:
command | findstr win >> file.txt
This gives me alot of unnessesary data.
I want to find:
command | findstr win% >> file.txt
But this dosent work at all....
How can I find the strings including "%"?
Br
Based on your question tags, your command appears within a batch script.
Percent literals must be escaped as %% within a batch script.
command | findstr win%% >> file.txt
The above will always work because your search string contains only one percent.
Note that each side of the pipe is executed in its own cmd.exe process using command line context (not batch). This could lead to a problem, depending on your search string and the current defined variables.
Suppose you wanted to search for win%lose%. The following might work:
command | findstr win%%lose%% >>file.txt
It works as long as there is no variable named lose in the environment. Since the FINDSTR command executes in a command line context, the %lose% string is preserved if lose is not defined.
But if lose is defined, then %lose% is expanded into the value and you get the wrong search. This could be solved by introducing a disappearing caret into the expression. A string like %^lose% will not expand a variable named lose. The variable expansion will include the caret as part of the name, not find anything, and leave the string intact. Afterwards, the normal escape phase will "escape" the l into itself, and the caret disappears. Now this would fail if a variable named ^lose is defined, but that is highly unlikely.
But the command is within a batch script, so the caret must be escaped.
command | findstr win%%^^lose%% >> file.txt
It is easier to simply enclose the string in quotes so you don't need to escape the caret.
command | findstr "win%%^lose%%" >> file.txt

Resources