Remove Trailing Backslashes from (ItemDir) in External Tools

Question

Remove Trailing Backslashes from (ItemDir) in External Tools

Nathan Sokalski 4,111

In my External Tools... I have a command with $(ItemDir) in the Arguments field. I want this to return the directory of the item without any trailing backslashes for filename, like the following:
D:\AppForms\SP1_Forms\SP1_Forms
However, it is including an extra backslash & double quote like the following:
D:\AppForms\SP1_Forms\SP1_Forms\"
How can I avoid the trailing \" ?

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Cyan 1 Reputation point

2026-11-11T01:23:46.8433333+00:00

append $() to the $(ItemDir), it will be like $(ItemDir)$() (no spaces between them),

vs will remove a trailing \ when it see there is chars after the macro variable, and replace $() with its value(empty string)

Answer accepted by question author

Viorel 127.3K

Maybe adding a '.' after $(ItemDir) will also work:

$(ItemDir).

This will probably generate "D:\AppForms\SP1_Forms\SP1_Forms\.", which is equivalent to "D:\AppForms\SP1_Forms\SP1_Forms".

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1 additional answer

Cyan 1 Reputation point

2026-11-11T01:23:46.8433333+00:00

append $() to the $(ItemDir), it will be like $(ItemDir)$() (no spaces between them),

vs will remove a trailing \ when it see there is chars after the macro variable, and replace $() with its value(empty string)

Answer 1

Dylan Zhu-MSFT 6,436

Hi njsokalski,

You can try to type this command: "$(ItemDir)".

Best Regards, Dylan

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