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.

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

How to: Edit Project Files

Other Resources

MSBuild Reference