Special Characters to Escape
Special characters must be escaped only if they have special meaning in the context in which they are being used. For example, the asterisk (*) is a special character only in the "Include" and "Exclude" attributes of an item definition, or in a call to CreateItem. In all other cases, the asterisk is treated as a literal asterisk. While you do not need to escape asterisks everywhere in project files, doing so does no harm.
Use the notation %xx in place of the special character, where xx represents the hexadecimal value of the ASCII character. For example, to use an asterisk (*) as a literal character, use the value %2A.
The full list of special characters to escape follows:
Character |
Description |
|---|---|
% |
Percent sign, used to reference metadata. |
$ |
Dollar sign, used to reference properties. |
@ |
At sign, used to reference item lists. |
( |
Open parenthesis, used in lists. |
) |
Close parenthesis, used in lists. |
` |
Apostrophe (or tick mark), used in conditions and other expressions. |
; |
Semicolon, a list separator. |
? |
Question mark, a wildcard character when describing a file spec in an item's Include/Exclude section. |
* |
Asterisk, a wildcard character when describing a file spec in an item's Include/Exclude section. |
See Also
Tasks
How to: Escape Special Characters in MSBuild