How do I use Powershell regex to convert "" into \"?

Question

I have a Powershell script that produces CSV. Only it double quotes double-quotes in a string, whereas every other piece of software I use (in the Unix world anyway) uses \" inside a string instead of "" to mean one double-quote.

Using Powershell regex's, how do I turn this:

"""C:\Java\jre8\bin\java"" -Djava.library.path=""C:\some\path\lib"" -classpath ""some;long;classpath"" com.foo.app.Main"

into this?

"\"C:\Java\jre8\bin\java\" -Djava.library.path=\"C:\some\path\lib\" -classpath \"some;long;classpath\" com.foo.app.Main"

I've tried using the supposed Powershell escape character (backtick), but haven't been able to get the conversion to work.

user6811411 · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-30 21:04:21Z

1

Use a Regular Expression with a positive lookahead zerolength assertion.

$String='"""C:\Java\jre8\bin\java"" -Djava.library.path=""C:\some\path\lib"" -classpath ""some;long;classpath"" com.foo.app.Main"
$String
$String -replace '"(?="[^"])','\'

yields:

"""C:\Java\jre8\bin\java"" -Djava.library.path=""C:\some\path\lib"" -classpath ""some;long;classpath"" com.foo.app.Main"
"\"C:\Java\jre8\bin\java\" -Djava.library.path=\"C:\some\path\lib\" -classpath \"some;long;classpath\" com.foo.app.Main"

answered Apr 30, 2019 at 21:04

user6811411

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2 Comments

gknauth Over a year ago

You answer works, thanks. Unfortunately, it didn't fix my particular problem, because it turns out the string only had single " in it, but it was the | Export-Csv -Path output.csv that was doubling up the ". Not sure if I can fix that without reading in output.csv and transforming that.

gknauth Over a year ago

Looks like "" for " in CSV is a "standard." I guess I'll just remove the extra " in whatever process reads the CSV.

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