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Asked: 2026-06-12T03:21:25+00:00

The Windows batch file I am trying to run contains the following assignment: set

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The Windows batch file I am trying to run contains the following assignment:

set ANT_HOME="C:/Program Files/apache-ant-1.8.4"

The offending line is:

call %ANT_HOME%/bin/ant -f ../config/common.xml start_db

And when I run the script with echo on I get:

call "C:/Program_Files/apache-ant-1.8.4"/bin/ant -f ../config/common.xml start_db
Files/apache-ant-1.8.4""=="" was unexpected at this time.

I’ve moved the second quote to to the end of the path, after the ant, but I receive the same error message.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If ant were an .exe I would say your code should work. But I suspect that ant is a batch file, and the error is occurring within the ant script.

    I base my conclusion on your error message – specifically the following portion of it: ""=="". The error message is a batch parsing error, and I don’t see how your code could generate those characters. So I figure ant must be a batch script that is causing the problem.

    I suspect ant.bat has @echo off at the top, so you are not seeing the actual line that is failing.

    Not having access to the ant.bat script, I couldn’t possibly diagnose exactly what is failing, nor can I guess on how to fix it.

    Update – exact problem found

    I found a copy of ant.bat online.

    It has the following line of code within:

    if "%ANT_HOME%"=="" set ANT_HOME=%DEFAULT_ANT_HOME%

    Your definition of ANT_HOME includes enclosing quotes, so the code is trying to execute

    if ""C:/Program Files/apache-ant-1.8.4""=="" set ANT_HOME=%DEFAULT_ANT_HOME%

    The space is not quoted, and you have your error.

    All you need to do to fix everything is to remove the quotes from the definition of ANT_HOME, and then add quotes to your CALL statement:

    set "ANT_HOME=C:/Program Files/apache-ant-1.8.4"
call "%ANT_HOME%/bin/ant" -f ../config/common.xml start_db

    Forward-slashes are not always reliable as folder delimiters within Windows. See Why does the cmd.exe shell on Windows fail with paths using a forward-slash ('/'') path separator?.

    Better to use back-slashes.

    set "ANT_HOME=C:\Program Files\apache-ant-1.8.4"
call "%ANT_HOME%\bin\ant" -f ..\config\common.xml start_db
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