Myujth

I have the following code inside my console application to get a server information using PowerShell:

string PsCmd = "add-pssnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core; $vCenterServer = '" + vCenterName.Trim() + "';$vCenterAdmin = '" + vCenterUsername.Trim() + "' ;$vCenterPassword = '" + vCenterPassword + "';" + System.Environment.NewLine;

PsCmd = PsCmd + "$VIServer = Connect-VIServer -Server $vCenterServer -User $vCenterAdmin -Password $vCenterPassword;" + System.Environment.NewLine;

PsCmd = PsCmd + "Get-VMHost " + System.Environment.NewLine;

Now the script is working well on the 150 servers we have, but on a single server I am getting this exception:

At line:1 char:131 + ... !*******(********6'*;*****'; + ~
Unexpected token 'h' in expression or statement. At line:1 char:135 +
... **(******';'; + ~~ The string is missing the terminator: '. |
ABC

Which is raising an error on the password variable. And in my case I am getting the password from an external RESP API. Now the password have this format:

"************

Where it starts with 2 reserved characters ", and the JSON object which I get will be as follow "PASSWORD":""*******".. so could the problem be that the password contains reserved set of characters "?? And how I can fix this?

Now the password have this format:

"*******

Where it starts with 2 reserved characters "

If your passwords really come from JSON such as "PASSWORD":""*******", your passwords do not start with " - they start with ", because the is simply a JSON escape character needed to embed a literal " in char. in an (always double-quoted) JSON string value.

In other words: If you parse your JSON correctly, the actual password value will be:

"*******

You can verify this as follows:

PS> (' "PASSWORD": ""*******" ' | ConvertFrom-Json).PASSWORD
"*******

Your next problem is that you're embedding the password in a string representing PowerShell source code, and inside that string you're using (embedded) single-quoting ('...') to surround the value^[1].

In order to do that, you must escape value-embedded ' instances as '' so as not to cause a syntax error when PowerShell later parses the code:

// Note the .Replace() calls
string PsCmd = "add-pssnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core; $vCenterServer = '" +
 vCenterName.Trim().Replace("'", "''") + "';$vCenterAdmin = '" + 
 vCenterUsername.Trim().Replace("'", "''") + 
 "' ;$vCenterPassword = '" + vCenterPassword.Replace("'", "''") + "';" + 
 System.Environment.NewLine;

With a literal password value of "***'*** (and sample values for the center and username), C# variable PSCmd will receive a string with the following literal contents:

add-pssnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core; $vCenterServer = 'center1';$vCenterAdmin = 'jdoe' ;$vCenterPassword = '"***''***';

^{[1] And single quotes are the right choice, because using double quotes could result in unwanted interpretation (string interpolation) of the embedded value by PowerShell.}

You need to escape the ". You do this in PowerShell using the ` character, e.g. `"

Try this:

string PsCmd = "Add-PSSnapin VMware.VimAutomation.Core; $vCenterServer = '" + vCenterName.Trim() + "'; $vCenterAdmin = '" + vCenterUsername.Trim() + "'; $vCenterPassword = "" + vCenterPassword.Replace(""", "`"") + "";" + System.Environment.NewLine;