Path issue with passing a command from Autohotkey to PowerShell - powershell

Question

Mypath := "C:\temp\example1.txt"
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
The above works just fine, content is copied to the clipboard by PowerShell but when I do the same thing but with a file that has a space in its file name it fails to run in PowerShell.
Running below
Mypath := "C:\temp\example 1.txt"
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
I get this error in PowerShell
Get-Content : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument '1.txt'.
I have also tried to use double quotes on each side and use Autohotkeys escape symbol like so:
Mypath = "`"C:\temp\example 1.txt`""
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
As well as
Mypath = ""C:\temp\example 1.txt""
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
But on both occasions, PowerShell throws this error;
The string is missing the terminator: ".
What am I doing wrong? any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is quite weird but it is possible to get it working. It's really one escape hell.
Lets go through what's wrong with each of your attempts.
Mypath := "C:\temp\example 1.txt"
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
Here you're not using the legacy syntax to assign a value to the variable Mypath, as you should.
It's a good thing to not be using the legacy syntax anymore.
However, since you're not using the legacy syntax, and are using the modern assigning operator :=(docs), you don't have any extra quotes " around the string.
So you're executing PowerShell with the following switches:
-command "get-content -path C:\temp\example 1.txt | Set-Clipboard".
And as you were able to guess, this is wrong because your filename is not quoted.
Mypath = "`"C:\temp\example 1.txt`""
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
Here you're again using legacy syntax. So any string is interpreted literally. Therefore, firstly there is no reason to try to escape the quotes ", and secondly you don't escape quotes in AHK with `.
So, in this attempt you're executing PowerShell with the following switches:
-command "get-content -path ""C:\temp\example 1.txt"" | Set-Clipboard".
And this is no good, because first ""s get evaluated to a single ", and then you have
-command "get-content -path "C:\temp\example 1.txt" | Set-Clipboard"
which has unescaped quotes " inside another quotes, so that's no good.
Mypath = ""C:\temp\example 1.txt""
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
And then here you have the exact same issue as in the previous one. Because, as we established, you don't escape quotes with `. This code is the exact same as the one above.
So, how should it be done?
You either need one more pair of escaped quotes " around the file path, or then just use a single quote for the inner quotes.
So in legacy syntax you'd want either:
Mypath = """"C:\temp\example 1.txt""""
Run, powershell -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
or
Mypath = 'C:\temp\example 1.txt'
Run, powershell -noexit -command "get-content -path %Mypath% | Set-Clipboard"
And in the modern expression syntax, you'd want either:
Mypath := """""""""C:\temp\example 1.txt"""""""""
Run, % "powershell -noexit -command ""get-content -path " Mypath " | Set-Clipboard"""
or
Mypath := "'C:\temp\example 1.txt'"
Run, % "powershell -noexit -command ""get-content -path " Mypath " | Set-Clipboard"""