asked on

powershell need help executing command line program

I think it has to do with single and double quotes. I had the same problem using tiffcp.exe and it took me several days of trial and error to get it working. I was not able to get PDFtk working with variables:
What do you think?
thanks!

$input = 'one.PDF two.PDF'
$options = ' cat output '
$output = ' c:\temp\document.PDF'

#this works:
& pdftk.exe -version

#this does work:
&pdftk.exe one.PDF two.PDF cat output "c:\temp\document.PDF"

#this doesn't work:
& pdftk.exe $input cat output $output

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Raheman M. Abdul

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SOLUTION

oBdA

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johnj_01201

ASKER

Start-Process simply worked and solved the issue without needing to know how PS works internally. The $CommandLine method did not work and caused a giant sized error message containing dozens of XML errors and I do not know what it meant or where it came from. The points were divided because oBda's link provides great details on how PS runs command line programs and is something I really need to learn when I have more time. It also explains why it took me 3 days to get the previous command line program to work by messing with the double quotes and why the error message always shows a double quote (or two single quotes?) at the end of line that I could not figure out where in my code the extra quote was coming from. THANKS!