[Bug]: MSBuild automatically escapes all my strings for me with seemingly no way to have it not do that? about msbuild

[EdLichtman]

I seem to have found an awful, awful workaround:

    <PropertyGroup>
      <Foo>$([MSBuild]::Unescape($(MyProperty.Replace(".","\.").Replace("*",".*").Replace("?",".").Replace("*", "%2A").Replace("%2A","%25252A"))))</Foo>
    </PropertyGroup>

The thing is, if I do %252A, thinking that it'll unescape to %2A, it seems to double-expand so I have to %25252A to expand %2525 into %25 which will then expand into %.

There's gotta be another way, as this kind of double unescape behavior seems like the kind of thing that can and will break without warning in a future iteration.

[maridematte]

We can see how this can be confusing, we will expand the documentation on how our escaping works so it is less confusing.

As for the break / change in future iterations, we consider any change to the escape behaviour a breaking change. As such, if we decided in the future to make changes to the escaping (we have no plans for such thing now) it will be implemented with Changewaves.