Call program from powershell.exe command and manipulate parameters

Question

I'm trying to call an EXE file program that accepts command line parameters from PowerShell. One of the parameters I'm required to send is based on the string length of the parameters.

For example,

app.exe /param1:"SampleParam" /paramLen:"SampleParam".length

When I run the above, or for example:

notepad.exe "SampleParam".length

Notepad opens with the value 11 as expected.

I would like to achieve the same result when calling PowerShell from cmd / task scheduler.

For example,

powershell notepad.exe "SampleParam".length

But when I do that I get "SampleParam".length literally instead of the "SampleParam".length calculated value.

The expected result was:

running notepad.exe 11

Palle Due · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-06 15:44:14Z

1

Use the -Command parameter for powershell.exe:

powershell -Command "notepad.exe 'SampleParam'.length"

Be careful with the "'s since they can be picked up by the Windows command processor. This will also work:

powershell -Command notepad.exe 'SampleParam'.length

But this will not:

powershell -Command notepad.exe "SampleParam".length

answered Dec 6, 2017 at 15:44

Palle Due

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Comments

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-26 22:16:02Z

1

I'd suggest using variables to store your string, etc.

$Arg1 = 'SampleParam'
## This will try to open a file named 11.txt
powershell notepad.exe $Arg1.Length

In your specific example:

app.exe /param1:$Arg1 /paramLen:$Arg1.Length

Utilizing splatting:

## Array literal for splatting
$AppArgs = @(
    "/param1:$Arg1"
    "/paramLen:$($Arg1.Length)"
)
app.exe @AppArgs

edited Mar 26, 2019 at 22:16

Peter Mortensen

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answered Dec 6, 2017 at 15:20

Maximilian Burszley

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5 Comments

Bill_Stewart Over a year ago

FYI splatting was adding in PowerShell v2.

Maximilian Burszley Over a year ago

@Bill_Stewart Not according to Microsoft's documentation

Bill_Stewart Over a year ago

That doc says "Revised for PowerShell 3.0." It doesn't say "splatting first appeared in PowerShell 3.0." I tested splatting in 2.0 and it works. Also see here: Use Splatting to Simplify Your PowerShell Scripts.

Maximilian Burszley Over a year ago

@Bill_Stewart Interesting.. I've definitely had a number of situations where it hasn't worked on PSv2, although after migrating my environment to 5.1, it hasn't really been a worry anymore

Bill_Stewart Over a year ago

I never had a problem with splatting in v2.

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