How to echo a message with a colon in it?

Question

This seems really simple, but I am so stuck - been searching lots of nearly matching questions but just can't find the answer.

All I want to do is something like this:

echo c:\another\test\file.h(22,11) : warning 123: this is a test warning

But that gives the error: : was unexpected at this time.

So I tried:

echo "c:\another\test\file.h(22,11) : warning 123: this is a test warning"

Which produces: "c:\another\test\file.h(22,11) : warning 123: this is a test warning". But I don't want the quotes. So I tried using the escape character "^":

echo c^:\another\test\file.h(22,11) ^: warning 123^: this is a test warning

But this had no effect. How can I achieve this?

UPDATE:

This line of code is within an if block, which appears to make a difference!:

if exist "somefile" ( echo c:\another\test\file.h(22,11) : warning 123: this is a test warning )

Answer 1

I believe your command line is placed within a paranthesised block of code, like this, for example:

if exist "c:\another\test\file.h" (
    echo c:\another\test\file.h(22,11) : warning 123: this is a test warning
)

So the closing ) in the echo command line is interpreted as the closing one of the entire block, leaving the portion : warning 123: this is a test warning as an invalid command line.

To solve it, you need to escape the ) by preceding a caret ^, which is cmd's escape character:

if exist "c:\another\test\file.h" (
    echo c:\another\test\file.h(22,11^) : warning 123: this is a test warning
)

Therefore the colon : in front of warning: ... is actually not causing the problem here.