Remove quotes from named environment variables in Windows scripts

Question

I want to store a URL prefix in an Windows environment variable. The ampersands in the query string makes this troublesome though.

For example: I have a URL prefix of http://example.com?foo=1&bar= and want to create a full URL by providing a value for the bar parameter. I then want to launch that URL using the "start" command.

Adding quotes around the value for the SET operation is easy enough:

set myvar="http://example.com?foo=1&bar="

Windows includes the quotes in the actual value though (thanks Windows!):

echo %myvar%
"http://example.com?foo=1&bar=true"

I know that I can strip quotes away from batch file arguments by using tilde:

echo %~1

However, I can't seem to do it to named variables:

echo %~myvar%
%~myvar%

What's the syntax for accomplishing this?

Answer 1

echo %myvar:"=%