This is something I have been struggling with for a few days and each time I think I have adjourned it, it falls apart.

I want to launch a new Windows Terminal window but with two caveats:

1. The new terminal must be a windows terminal profile
2. At the same time, pass a command line argument to the WT profile’s shell, which is pwsh, so pwsh’s -command parameter

A few days ago, I figured out how to send command line arguments to the profiles shell, Pass a command line argument to the new terminal window that is about to be launched? #17521.

This successfully opens a new terminal window with my_profile profile. The host prints my message:

wt -p my_profile pwsh -noExit -command "'my message'"

All was good and well until it broke on me today. The following does open a new terminal window but the window prints an error:

wt -p my_profile pwsh -noExit -command "'my message' ; 'my second message'"

The error is printed by windows terminal (not pwsh):

[error 2147942402 (0x80070002) when launching `" 'my second message'"']

If I eliminate WT from the equation, pwsh correctly receives input to its -command parameter:

pwsh -noExit -command "'my message' ; 'my second message'"


#my message
#my second message

Is pwsh really not at fault here?
Is there some sort of pwsh mechanism that can help me to navigate around this issue?

I would appreciate any solutions in either pwsh or wt

Windows Terminal 1.19 preview
pwsh 7.4
win 11