Opening a URL with an equals in it

Question

I am looking to create a very simple batch file to open a URL. It's so simple I'm just usingstart URL.

The problem is that in the URL there are some '=' signs ie.context=user&overlay=node and this is stopping the batchfile from opening the full URL.

How can I stop this.

Kind regards

Matt

Have you tried to put the URL in double quotes? Like this: `start "" "URL"` — 303, Jun 15 '17 at 11:39
You could also escape characters to not being interpreted by cmd.exe with a caret `^=^|^<^>^&^,^;` as you see @Treintjes comment makes more sense in most of the cases. — , Jun 15 '17 at 12:21
Possible duplicate of [How do I escape ampersands in batch files?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1327431/how-do-i-escape-ampersands-in-batch-files) — phuclv, Jun 15 '17 at 13:18
As @LưuVĩnhPhúc notes, it's the ampersand that's causing the problem, not the equals sign. — TripeHound, Jun 15 '17 at 15:32

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 15 '17 at 11:37

1

You should probably url-encode the equal signs to %3D - see for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding.

answered Jun 15 '17 at 11:37

cjs1978

2

The snippet the OP showed looks like they _need_ to be equals signs as they appear to be setting query values -- you would encode an equals sign if the _value_ contained an equals: `...&search=abc%3Ddef&...`. – TripeHound Jun 15 '17 at 15:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 15 '17 at 13:09

1

& and = are specials characters in batch scripting. Just quote the URL and pass an empty string as the title like that :

@echo off
start "" "https://example.com/context=user&overlay=node"

answered Jun 15 '17 at 13:09

Hackoo

2 Answers2