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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T01:14:28+00:00

I’m trying to write a powershell script which will execute sqlcmd.exe to run a

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I’m trying to write a powershell script which will execute sqlcmd.exe to run a sql script. The script contains a SQLCMD variable which I want to pass in on the command line via sqlcmd’s -v switch. The problem is that powershell is doing something weird when I pass a path as the value of one of my variables which in turn causes the SQL script to fail.

For example I’m calling:

$path = 'C:\path'
sqlcmd -SMySQLServerInstance  -i 'MySqlScript.sql'  -v MyVariablePath=$path

when run I receive a error which says:

Sqlcmd: ':\path': Invalid argument.

No amount of double or single quotes that I have tried around $path or MyVariablePath=$path
solves the issue.

Can somebody provide a simple canonical example of how this needs to be done?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    finally worked it out. for the next sucker to try this here is the solution

    powershell script looks like

    $myPath = "`"C:\Path`"" 
sqlcmd.exe -SmySQLInstance -i./test.sql -v myvar=$myPath

    my test.sql file can then use the variable like this

    PRINT "$(myvar)"

    the key here is understanding how powershell does escape characters. More info on that here

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