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windowspowershellftpsftpwinscp

PowerShell "You must provide a value expression following the '/' operator" error when calling WinSCP.com

I have a piece of code that puts a file into an FTP server. Looks like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.com" /command "open user@myFTPServer:MyPort/MyPath/ -privatekey=myprivatekey.ppk" "put myfile.txt" "exit"

This runs fine in the Windows command prompt, but when running the same thing in PowerShell it doesn't work and returns me the following error:

"You must provide a value expression following the '/' operator"

I've tried a few combinations of my code but none of them worked:

1)

"C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.com" -command "open user@myFTPServer:MyPort/MyPath/ -privatekey=myprivatekey.ppk" "put myfile.txt" "exit"

2)

"C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.com" -command ""open user@myFTPServer:MyPort/MyPath/ -privatekey=myprivatekey.ppk" "put myfile.txt" "exit""
Solution

  • Since the path and/or filename of the winscp.com executable contains whitespace, invoke it with the & operator:

    & "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.com" /command "open user@myFTPServer:MyPort/MyPath/ -privatekey=myprivatekey.ppk" "put myfile.txt" "exit"

    (assuming the command-line arguments to winscp.com are otherwise correct, of course)