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Encode and Decode SQL Server Identifiers

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Applies to: SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance Azure Synapse Analytics Analytics Platform System (PDW)

SQL Server-delimited identifiers sometimes contain characters not supported in Windows PowerShell paths. These characters can be specified by encoding their hexadecimal values.

Note

There are two SQL Server PowerShell modules; SqlServer and SQLPS.

The SqlServer module is the current PowerShell module to use.

The SQLPS module is included with the SQL Server installation (for backward compatibility) but is no longer updated.

The SqlServer module contains updated versions of the cmdlets in SQLPS and includes new cmdlets to support the latest SQL features.

Install the SqlServer module from the PowerShell Gallery.

For more information, see SQL Server PowerShell.

Characters that are not supported in Windows PowerShell path names can be represented, or encoded, as the "%" character followed by the hexadecimal value for the bit pattern that represents the character, as in "**%**xx". Encoding can always be used to handle characters that are not supported in Windows PowerShell paths.

The Encode-SqlName cmdlet takes as input a SQL Server identifier. It outputs a string with all the characters that are not supported by the Windows PowerShell language encoded with "%xx". The Decode-SqlName cmdlet takes as input an encoded SQL Server identifier and returns the original identifier.

Limitations and Restrictions

The Encode-Sqlname and Decode-Sqlname cmdlets only encode or decode the characters that are allowed in SQL Server-delimited identifiers, but are not supported in PowerShell paths. The following are the characters encoded by Encode-SqlName and decoded by Decode-SqlName:

Character \ / : % < > * ? [ ] |
Hexadecimal Encoding %5C %2F %3A %25 %3C %3E %2A %3F %5B %5D %7C

Encoding an Identifier

To encode a SQL Server identifier in a PowerShell path

  • Use one of two methods to encode a SQL Server identifier:
    • Specify the hexadecimal code for the unsupported character using the syntax %XX, where XX is the hexadecimal code.
    • Pass the identifier as a quoted string to the Encode-Sqlname cmdlet

Examples (Encoding)

This example specifies the encoded version of the ":" character (%3A):

Set-Location Table%3ATest

Alternatively, you can use Encode-SqlName to build a name supported by Windows PowerShell:

Set-Location (Encode-SqlName "Table:Test")

Decoding an Identifier

To decode a SQL Server identifier from a PowerShell path

Use the Decode-Sqlname cmdlet to replace the hexadecimal encodings with the characters represented by the encoding.

Examples (Decoding)

This example returns "Table:Test":

Decode-SqlName "Table%3ATest"

See Also