Can I use extended ASCII characters in a BAT file?
I have a bunch of dynamically generated * .BAT files. These BAT files are used to create folders on the server. Just one line in each BAT file, for example: MKDIR \ NetworkShare \ abc \ 123
This string "abc \ 123" is taken from the database.
It has been working for a while to create thousands of subfolders on demand, until today it stopped creating a special subfolder with a "closed single quote" ( Alt+ 0146when typed from a dos prompt) on the string.
I did some research and found that this "close single quote" is an extended ASCII character. It cannot be saved properly in the ANSI BAT file (eventually as something else). I tried UNICODE and UTF-8 BAT file but it doesn't work.
The only close-close solution is that I tried a binary editor to make sure it is code 146, but code 146 gives me Æ (ALT-146) not "close single quote" ( Alt+ 0146).
I know I can manually enter special characters at the DOS prompt (using the keyboard Alt+ ). But is there a way to properly store this "closed single quote" ( Alt+ 0146) in a BAT file so that I can execute them dynamically?
The host system is Windows Server 2003 US-English.
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Thank you for the CHCP 65001 trick . This leads to the correct solution:
I decided to follow these steps:
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Prepare BAT text file (manually or dynamically)
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(1) Make the first line empty (this is necessary because there are hidden characters in the first line for a UTF-8 text file)
(2) Place CHCP 65001 as the second line
(3) main line here: MKDIR \ networkshare \ abc (right single quote -> this is a special extended ASCII char) \ 123
(4) make sure the BAT file is saved as UTF-8
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Now this is the CMD.EXE trick
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(1) Run cmd.exe
(2) open black screen property cmd.exe
(3) make sure the black screen font is "true type" ie. "TT". By default it is a bitmap font, it cannot handle special ascii code correctly. (This is a key step)
(4) I can now start my BAT to handle these extended ASCII characters correctly.
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Try changing the code page of your batch file to UTF-8: paste this line at the top of your batch file and save the file as UTF-8:
chcp 65001
Be careful: creating folders with non-ASCII letters may break some programs that might rely on the old library API, or simply assume that all folder and file names are ASCII.
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