It’s not just about parentheses, really. It’s about almost anything that a script engine will ruthlessly interpret before executing a command: variable markers (percent signs), redirection symbols, parentheses, double quotes, ampersands…
My most common… let’s say, case, is this:
@echo off echo Doing something (very important)...
Put this in a BATch file, run it, and you’ll end up with a message saying
... was unexpected at this time.
No, seriously? It’s great that the engine is trying to evaluate an expression within an echo, but this time I need something much more simple: round brackets embedded into a text message. Just that. Please.
Thank heavens there is a “cure”: parentheses can be escaped with a caret character.
@echo off echo Doing something ^(very important^)...
Now we’re good:
Doing something (very important)...
Carets can be used to escape almost any special character, even a newline — to break a single command in several lines.
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