I want to find a string "Hello (Hello starts with double quote) in text files using ripgrep.
Normally, in Bash or ZSH, this would work by escaping with backslash or surrounding with single quote:
rg \"Hello
rg '"Hello'
However, in MS Windows (Powershell and CMD), I've tried these but none of these worked:
rg \"Hello
rg '"Hello'
rg `"Hello
rg '`"Hello'
Is there any way to escape single or double quotes using ripgrep in MS Windows?
Verbatim string "Hello must ultimately be passed as \"Hello to rg ("\"Hello" would work too). That is, the verbatim " char. must be \-escaped:
From cmd.exe:
rg \^"Hello
^, cmd.exe's escape character, ensures that the " is treated verbatim and is removed by cmd.exe before calling rg.
Note that ^ isn't strictly necessary here, but it prevents the " from being considered the start of a double-quoted argument, which could make a difference if there were additional arguments.
From PowerShell:
rg \`"Hello
`, PowerShell's escape character, ensures that the " is treated verbatim and is removed by PowerShell before calling rg.
Arguably, the explicit \-escaping shouldn't be necessary, because it is the duty of a shell to properly pass arguments to target executables after the user has satisfied the shell's own escaping requirements (escaping the verbatim " with ^ in cmd.exe, and with ` in PowerShell).
In the context of PowerShell, this problematic behavior is summarized in this answer.
Note that in PowerShell this extra escaping is only needed if you call external programs; it isn't needed PowerShell-internally - such as when you call Select-String, as shown in js2010's answer.