---
name: cli-quote-strings
title: Using quotation marks with strings in IBM Cloud CLI
description: Depending on the operating system that you're running IBM Cloud® Command Line Interface on, you use either single or double quotation marks in the command. Linux™, macOS, the Windows™ command prompt (`cmd.exe`), and Windows™ PowerShell have different quotation-escaping requirements when you run commands. This difference impacts how you pass strings on the IBM Cloud® command line, including JSON content.
last-updated: 2024-10-15
---

> ## Documentation Index
> The table of contents for this documentation set is at https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/cli?format=markdown
> The index for all IBM Cloud docs is at: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use these files to discover more information as needed.

# Using quotation marks with strings in IBM Cloud CLI
{: #quote-strings}

Depending on the operating system that you're running IBM Cloud® Command Line Interface on, you use either single or double quotation marks in the command. Linux™, macOS, the Windows™ command prompt (`cmd.exe`), and Windows™ PowerShell have different quotation-escaping requirements when you run commands. This difference impacts how you pass strings on the IBM Cloud® command line, including JSON content.
{: shortdesc}

For Linux, macOS, or PowerShell, use single quotation marks ('). For the Windows command prompt, use double quotation marks ("). A JSON string requires double quotation marks around each name and value in the JSON structure. For more information, see the following examples.

## Windows command prompt
{: #quote-windows}

For a Windows command prompt, use double quotation marks to surround the JSON data structure. Also, you must escape each double quotation mark that is inside the JSON structure by using a backslash before each double quotation mark.

```bash
ibmcloud resource service-instance-create my-service-instance db-service lite us-south -p "{\"units\":1}"
```
{: codeblock}

## Linux or macOS
{: #quote-linux}

For Linux or macOS, use single quotation marks to surround the JSON data structure.

```bash
ibmcloud resource service-instance-create my-service-instance db-service lite us-south -p '{"units":1}'
```
{: codeblock}

## Windows PowerShell
{: #quote-powershell}

For PowerShell, use single quotation marks to surround the JSON data structure. Also, you must escape each double quotation mark that is inside the JSON structure by using a backslash before each double quotation mark.

``` bash
ibmcloud resource service-instance-create my-service-instance db-service lite us-south -p '{\"units\":1}'
```
{: codeblock}