Special Characters to Escape
Special characters must be escaped only if they have special meaning in the context in which they are being used. For example, the asterisk (*) is a special character only in the "Include" and "Exclude" attributes of an item definition, or in a call to CreateItem. In all other cases, the asterisk is treated as a literal asterisk. While you do not need to escape asterisks everywhere in project files, doing so does no harm.
The full list of special characters to escape follows:
Character | Description |
|---|---|
% | Percent sign, used to reference metadata. |
$ | Dollar sign, used to reference properties. |
@ | At sign, used to reference item lists. |
( | Open parenthesis, used in lists. |
) | Close parenthesis, used in lists. |
` | Apostrophe (or tick mark), used in conditions and other expressions. |
; | Semicolon, a list separator. |
? | Question mark, a wildcard character when describing a file spec in an item's Include/Exclude section. |
* | Asterisk, a wildcard character when describing a file spec in an item's Include/Exclude section. |
