Special Characters to Escape
Note
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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
How to: Escape Special Characters in MSBuild
MSBuild Reference