Question

I am writing software to scan through predetermined services and start them if they are stopped. Unfortunately some of the service names have spaces so if i do this:

for %%a in (MSSQLSERVER,SQLSERVERAGENT,Cardinal SPD Delivery Package Service,AuthenticationServiceHost,CommunicationService,CqiProcessorService,IISADMIN,MobileAutmationAgentService,MSMQ) do (

What happens is, it treats the Cardinal SPD Delivery package as three separate services instead of one when i do

net start "%%a"

for example.
The alternative that I found that works is putting the services in a text file and doing

for /f %%a in (services.txt) do(

But I would prefer to do it the first method since it’s a lot cleaner. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Either double quote all services names and don’t quote %%a in the call:

for %%a in ("MSSQLSERVER","SQLSERVERAGENT","Cardinal SPD Delivery Package Service","AuthenticationServiceHost","CommunicationService","CqiProcessorService","IISADMIN","MobileAutmationAgentService","MSMQ") do (
net start %%a
)

Or double quote only multiple words and remove the quotes from %%a when you call it:

for %%a in (MSSQLSERVER,SQLSERVERAGENT,"Cardinal SPD Delivery Package Service",AuthenticationServiceHost,CommunicationService,CqiProcessorService,IISADMIN,MobileAutmationAgentService,MSMQ) do (
net start %%~a
)