vb6 - Escape double quote in VB string

Question

I have used following piece of code to execute schtasks command from VB6. While executing it, ignores folder if they contains spaces. For example, "C:program filesestest.exe" will be converted to "c:program ". How do I solve this issue?

MyAppname =  Chr(34) & App.Path & "" & App.EXEName & ".exe" & Chr(34)
StrCommand = "schtasks /create /sc ONLOGON /RL HIGHEST  /tn myapp  /tr " & MyAppname  
Shell StrCommand, vbHide   

New task added as "c:program" instead of "C:program filesestest.exe"

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Escaping quotes in VB6 or VBScript strings is simple in theory although often frightening when viewed. You escape a double quote with another double quote.

An example:

"c:program filesmy appapp.exe"

If I want to escape the double quotes so I could pass this to the shell execute function listed by Joe or the VB6 Shell function I would write it:

escapedString = """c:program filesmy appapp.exe"""

How does this work? The first and last quotes wrap the string and let VB know this is a string. Then each quote that is displayed literally in the string has another double quote added in front of it to escape it.

It gets crazier when you are trying to pass a string with multiple quoted sections. Remember, every quote you want to pass has to be escaped.

If I want to pass these two quoted phrases as a single string separated by a space (which is not uncommon):

"c:program filesmy appapp.exe" "c:documents and settingssteve"

I would enter this:

escapedQuoteHell = """c:program filesmy appapp.exe"" ""c:documents and settingssteve"""

I've helped my sysadmins with some VBScripts that have had even more quotes.

It's not pretty, but that's how it works.