How to escape variables with parentheses inside if-clause in a batch file?

Question

Running this batch file

@echo off set a=some value with (parentheses) inside if 1 == 1 (     set PATH=%a% ) 

gives inside was unexpected at this time. error.

How to escape a variable to avoid this error?

Answer 1

You can use two different ways

Use the extended syntax of set with quotes set "var=content" will set var with content, content is quoted so special characters aren't problematic and it uses the content till the last quote (without the quote itself)

@echo off set a=some value with (parentheses) inside if 1 == 1 (     set "PATH=%a%" ) 

Use delayed expansion (like the answer of shf301) but also transfer the value to the main scope.

@echo off setlocal enabledelayedexpansion set a=some value with (parentheses) inside if 1 == 1 (     set "localScope_PATH=!a!"     rem now transfer it to the global scope     FOR /F "delims=" %%A in ("!localScope_PATH!") DO (        endlocal        set "path=%%A"     ) ) 

In this case the extended set-syntax is not necessary, I used it only to avoid hidden spaces at the line end.

EDIT: Can I combine this with setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion and using ! instead of % to lazy evaluate variable's value? When I tried I got )! was unexpected at this time.

You can, but it's contra productive, as

@echo off Setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set a=some value with (parentheses) inside if 1 == 1 (     set PATH=!a:^)=^^^)!     set path ) 

Then your path contains carets in front of the ) like C:\programs (x86^)

To understand how expansion works you can read SO:How does the Windows Command Interpreter (CMD.EXE) parse scripts?

EDIT2: More problems with the path (containing quotes)
According to this question there can occour another problem with parenthesis when the path contains quotes.

Sample
path="C:\Program Files (x86)";C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype

This is allowed, even it's not necessary to use quotes here, but this destroys the extended SET syntax, as now set "newPath=%path%" expands to

set "newPath="C:\Program Files (x86)";C:\Program Files (x86)\Skype" 

Now at least one parenthesis is not inside quotes and is able to break a command block.

But you can simply remove all quotes from the path variable, as said, quotes aren't necessary here.

set "newPath=%path:"=%"