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bashpowershellbcp

BCP command in powershell

In bash, I am using the following bcp command to create an XML format:

bcp DATABASE.[UserData] format nul -c -x -f F:\UsageExports\UserData.xml -t, -T

However, when I run the same command in Powershell, I get the error: Missing argument in parameter list

I also tried executing the command without in Powershell:

bcp DATABASE.[UserData] format nul -c -x -f F:\UsageExports\UserData.xml -t -T

However, the -t tag does not work and the terminator is not included in the XML.

Solution

  • PowerShell can be rather picky when it comes to passing arguments to an external command. Usually the best way of dealing with such a situation is to define an array with the arguments and then splat that array on the command:

    $params = 'DATABASE.[UserData]', 'format', 'nul', '-c', '-x',
          '-f', 'F:\UsageExports\UserData.xml', '-t,', '-T'

& bcp @params

    In your case the issue is probably caused by the argument , for the parameter -t. A comma in PowerShell is used for constructing arrays. I would guess that -t, -T is interpreted as @('-t', '-T') and then mangled to '-t -T' when the external command is invoked.