Escape character for '£' in batch file - batch-file

Question

I am trying to execute a program from command line where there will be parameters. In my password there is a symbol '£', which I could not find to escape.

Answer 1

It is always good to enclose a parameter string like a quite good password containing also other characters than ASCII letters and numbers in double quotes.
But care must be taken on using characters in batch files which are not from ASCII table, i.e. the code point value (byte value) of the character is greater 127 decimal.
On using Windows Notepad to write a batch file and saving the file with ANSI encoding, the characters with a code point value greater 127 are saved using the code page according to Windows Region and Language settings. For North American and Western European countries this means using code page Windows-1252. The pound sign has decimal value 163 (hexadecimal: A3) in this code page.
But in a command process a different code page is used which can be seen by opening a command prompt window and run the command CHCP (change code page) without any parameter. This command outputs the active code page for command process which depends also on Windows Region and Language settings. The code page OEM 437 is used in North American countries and OEM 850 in Western European countries by default within a command process. The pound sign has the decimal value 156 in code page 437 as also in code page 850.
In other words you need to know what the application which compares the password expects for the pound sign in password:
A byte with value 163 as the password was defined using a GUI application.
A byte with value 156 as the password was defined from within a command prompt window.
Or 1 or even more other byte values depending on the code page and character encoding (ANSI, OEM, UTF-8, UTF-16) used as the password with pound sign was defined. For example UTF-8 character encoding uses 2 bytes with the decimal values 194 and 163 to encode a pound sign.
So what to write into the batch file?
Well, you have to find that out by yourself.
For example the password was defined from within a command prompt window using code page 850 and so the pound sign in stored password is a single byte with value 156. The batch file is edited in Notepad using code page 1252 and therefore the character œ must be used in password to have a byte with value 156 in the batch file in password string.

Answer 2

Thank you for your detailed answer #Mofi.
Background: My CMD program calls SQLPlus and the database password contains a '£'.
Summing this up into a short fix, the following steps worked for me.
The fix:
Open your script in a robust text editor (e.g. Atom, Notepad++,
etc)
Change the file encoding (of the text editor) to CP-1252
Add chcp 1252>nul to the top of your script
Run your script and enjoy the results!

Answer 3

As you have found, handling of the UK pound sign is a trap for the unwary in batch files.
The issue here is that a UK pound sign £ is not an ascii character, so is processed differently by the command prompt and Windows GUI programs like Notepad.
A solution that worked for me was to change the code page in the batch file to 650001 for unicode before using the £ sign.
This idea was discussed at Change the active console Code Page, which explains that the default code page is determined by the Windows Locale.
For example, put this code at the start of your batch file:
#echo off
:: Change the code page to Unicode/65001 before using non-ascii characters.
chcp 65001