Escaping & in command prompt

[anish do]

Hi,
How to escape & in command prompt. The whole idea is to pass a URL as a command line argument. But that URL contains & symbols. So I am getting the following error.
"'pid' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file."

See the below ant script
<target name="x" depends="y">
<java classname="${main-class}" fork="true" failonerror="yes">
<classpath>
<path refid="lib.classpath" />
<fileset dir="${z}" includes="**/*.jar" />
</classpath>
<arg value="${URL}" />
</java>
</target>

Thanks
Anish

[Martijn Verburg]

Which operating system are you using? I'd suggest googling "escape characters on command line <insert you OS here>"

[David Newton]

Unix uses the "&" character to put jobs into the background; I don't know if DOS uses it or not.

[anish do]

Hi,
I am using windows XP. I can pass the url in double quotes. Thanks for your help. If you know any other ways to resolve this issue please let me know

Thanks
Anish