Passing a string with spaces into a parameter - powershell

Question

I have an issue with passing a parameter with spaces into a powershell script. It seems to only work with the first part of the parameter string before the space

[CmdletBinding()]
Param(

 [Parameter(Mandatory=$True, ParameterSetName='firewallCommand',Position=0,HelpMessage="Input Firewall Index")]
 [string]$fwName,

 [Parameter(Mandatory=$True, ParameterSetName='firewallCommand',Position=1,  HelpMessage="Input Firewall Command")]
 [string]$fwCommand)

Within the script this will pass the parameters to the following command as such:

 cprid_util -server $firewallIpAdd -verbose rexec -rcmd  "$fwCommand"

On the command line if I run this it works:

.\fwcommand_run.ps1 -fwName firewall-name -fwCommand "ps"

If I run this it doesn't work at all:

 .\fwcommand_run.ps1 -fwName firewall-name -fwCommand "ps -ef"

But if I invoke the command directly it does work:

cprid_util -server 10.1.128.4  -verbose rexec -rcmd  ps -ef

Answer 1

$fwCommand are registered as a single value. Echoargs from Powershell Community Extensions are very useful for situations like this:

$fwCommand = "ps -ef"
$firewallIpAdd = "127.0.0.1"

$command = "cprid_util -server $firewallIpAdd -verbose rexec -rcmd '$fwCommand'"
[management.automation.psparser]::Tokenize($command,[ref]$null) | Format-Table Content, Type -AutoSize

Content                Type
-------                ----
cprid_util          Command
-server    CommandParameter
127.0.0.1   CommandArgument
-verbose   CommandParameter
rexec       CommandArgument
-rcmd      CommandParameter
ps -ef               String

.\EchoArgs.exe -server $firewallIpAdd -verbose rexec -rcmd $fwCommand

Arg 0 is <-server>
Arg 1 is <127.0.0.1>
Arg 2 is <-verbose>
Arg 3 is <rexec>
Arg 4 is <-rcmd>
Arg 5 is <ps -ef>

You can split up the values on whitespace or use Invoke-Expression.

$firewallIpAdd = "127.0.0.1"
$fwCommand = "ps -ef"
Invoke-Expression ".\EchoArgs.exe -server $firewallIpAdd -verbose rexec -rcmd $fwCommand"

Arg 0 is <-server>
Arg 1 is <127.0.0.1>
Arg 2 is <-verbose>
Arg 3 is <rexec>
Arg 4 is <-rcmd>
Arg 5 is <ps>
Arg 6 is <-ef>

Answer 2

I managed to get this working by splitting the $fwCommand string up

 $commandSplit = $fwCommand -split ' '
 cprid_util -server $firewallIpAdd -verbose rexec -rcmd  $commandSplit[0] $commandSplit[1]}