Feature Request

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

I want non-double quoted symbols not to behave like double quotes.

If that’s difficult, consider adding it to your pwsh.exe startup options.

Example problem

Command

Test-Path "“OK!“"

Result

Test-Path: A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'OK!'.

[mklement0]

I forgot the more obvious solutions:

Single-quoting:

PS> '“OK!“'
“OK!“

`-escaping:

PS> "`“OK!`“"
“OK!“

[mklement0]

I understand that PowerShell’s permissiveness with respect to quoting/whitespace equivalence can be surprising.

I can’t speak to the original design intent, but I assume it was to accommodate source code created with or copied and pasted from editors that use non-ASCII-range quotation marks and whitespace.

If you have verbatim file names that are passed via macro expansion, before PowerShell sees the resulting source code, use a verbatim here-string (this also works with file names that contain '):

# Assume the content of the here-string is provided via up-front macro expansion:
Write-Output @'
“OK!“
'@

Note that if your file name is stored in a PowerShell variable, no extra effort is needed:

$fname = '“OK!“'
Write-Output $fname