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I'm working with HTML files created by Acrobat, which doesn't use proper HTML entities to escape Unicode characters. I need to include single and double right quotation marks in a regex pattern, but every attempt I've made at escaping these characters has failed in my script...even if it works from a regular PowerShell session.

For example, this find/replace does not work:

 $html = $html.Replace("`“", '“') $html = $html.Replace("`”", '”') $html = $html.Replace("`‘", '‘') $html = $html.Replace("`’", '’')

...but it does work if I break into my script and run one of those replace lines from the debug prompt.

Edit: Here's a snippet of the markup I'm testing with right now:

<p style="padding-left: 5pt;text-indent: 17pt;line-height: 119%;text-align: justify;">To guide its readers the Hermetica makes use of the mystical astrological world-view that we have been discussing. It describes the creation of the world as a series of emanations, starting with the Light, who gave birth to a son called Logos. In the words of Hermes’s guide, Poimandres:</p><p style="padding-left: 24pt;text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 119%;text-align: justify;">“That Light,” he said, “is I, even Mind, the first God, who was before the watery substance which appeared out of the darkness; and the Logos which came forth the Light is son of God.”</p><p style="padding-left: 21pt;text-indent: 1pt;line-height: 119%;text-align: justify;">(Scott, Walter, translator, Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings Which Contain Religious or Philosophical Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Boston: Shambhala: 1985, p. 117)</p>

If $html equals that string, my attempts to find and replace the characters appear to be futile.

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  • The snippet you posted seems to work, which makes me think there's something else going on in a part of your script that you didn't include. Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 16:54
  • Hmmm. $html is just the contents of an Acrobat-generated HTML file, and this is early into the parsing of the file, so I haven't done much to it. If I output the contents of $html at a debug prompt (in VSCode), I still see the Unicode quote characters, not the HTML entities - same goes for outputting $html to a text file so I can see the result. Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 16:57
  • I'm getting correct results from a non-VSCode PowerShell window, so this might be something specific to VSCode's PowerShell extension. Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 17:11
  • It's very possible. I've only ever used PowerShell ISE so I couldn't say one way or the other. Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 17:13
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    Ok, this seems to be an issue with the encoding of my .ps1 file. A test script I created in the ISE was saved as UTF-8 BOM, whereas VSCode creates UTF8 files without the BOM. The ISE-created test with BOM encoding works; the exact same code saved as UTF8 in VSCode does not. Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 19:49

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Try using the Unicode values instead of backquoting the literal:

 $html = $html.Replace("`u{201C}", '&ldquo;') $html = $html.Replace("`u{201D}", '&rdquo;') $html = $html.Replace("`u{2018}", '&lsquo;') $html = $html.Replace("`u{2019}", '&rsquo;')

Produces

enter image description here

If you're having problems with encoding (UTF-8, for example, as you suggested), take a look at https://unicode-table.com - you can get the code values for any encoding.

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2 Comments

First one worked for me :) nice answer
That format for Unicode entities isn't working at all for me.
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Evidently, PowerShell does funny things with non-BOM UTF-8 encoding. Setting VSCode to auto-encode PowerShell scripts as UTF-8 with BOM allows the String.Replace function to operate as expected.

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