Nesting Quotation Marks Inside Windows Help Macros

ID: Q77748

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) 3.1
Microsoft Win32 Software Development Kit (SDK), versions 3.5, 3.51, 4.0

In Windows Help macros, strings may be delimited in two ways. The string can be opened and closed by double quotation marks or the string can be opened by a single opening quotation mark and closed by a single closing quotation mark.

Any quoted strings contained in a string delimited with double quotation marks must be enclosed in opening and closing single quotation marks.

The single opening quotation mark is different from the single closing quotation mark. The single opening quotation mark (`) is paired with the tilde (~) above the TAB key on extended keyboards; the single closing quotation mark (') is the same as the apostrophe. For example,


   CreateButton("time_btn", "&Time", "ExecProgram("clock", 0)")

is illegal because the string "clock" uses double quotation marks within the double quotation marks used for the ExecProgram macro. The following example corrects the error by enclosing "clock" in single quotation marks:


   CreateButton("time_btn", "&Time", "ExecProgram(`clock', 0)")

Additional query words: win16sdk handtag


Keywords          : kbtool TlsHlp 
Version           : 3.1 3.5 3.51 4.0
Platform          : NT WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: March 5, 1999