Splitting long commands with caret (^) not working with Piping (|) in Batch file

Question

The answers on this question state that long commands can be split into multiple lines via the use of the caret character (^). One answer provides a technical description:

the caret and the newline that follows it are removed entirely from the command

However, this doesn't always seem to work when piping commands and using the piping symbol (|).

Take a look at the following examples:

---

Code to split:

dir | sort

❌ DOES NOT WORK

dir ^
| sort

✅ WORKS #1

dir ^
 | sort

^{Notice the space in 2nd line}

✅ WORKS #2

dir |^
sort

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Would love to know why this is the case :)

Answer 1

As this answer states, somewhat cryptically, the full technical definition of how the caret (^) works is as follows:

A caret at the end of the line:

• removes the newline that follows (e.g. turning 2 lines into 1)
• escapes the first character of the next line
• removes the caret symbol (^) you typed

Since the piping symbol | is the first character in the next line, it will be escaped and thus lose its special meaning and just be interpreted as a text character.

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Examples:

dir ^
/B

Turns into:

dir ^/B

The ^ character is the escape character. The forward slash / carries no special meaning, so escaping it has no effect, making the command work as expected and effectively turning it into this:

dir /B

---

However, look at this:

dir ^
& echo hello

Turns into:

dir ^& echo hello

Which escapes the special & character (which has the special meaning of executing the right command after the left one). You will get an error since all of & echo hello will be sent as parameters to the dir command.

---

Which means that something like this will work:

dir ^
& & echo hello

Turns into:

dir ^& & echo hello

The first & is escaped, while the second & is interpreted correctly. This will run dir ^&, which sends & (raw text character) as the directory parameter for dir, and then run echo hello because of the second & character working as normal. dir ^& will fail because "&" is no valid directory, and then echo hello will print out "hello".

---

Returning to piping, let's look at the example you provided that's not working:

dir ^
| sort

Turns into:

dir ^| sort

The piping symbol | will be escaped and not be interpreted as piping (it will appear as text character). And thus, "| sort" will be sent as parameters to the dir command, which won't find the directory, and fail.

---

To solve this, as you already figured out, you need to add a space at the start of the next line.

This way, the space will be escaped, while the subsequent pipe symbol | will be interpreted as normal:

dir ^
 | sort

Turns into:

dir ^ | sort

Which is effectively:

dir | sort