title: Remove quotes from named environment variables in Windows scripts
body: <p>I want to store a URL prefix in an Windows environment variable. The ampersands in the query string makes this troublesome though.</p>
  
  <p>For example: I have a URL prefix of <code>http://example.com?foo=1&amp;bar=</code> and want to create a full URL by providing a value for the <code>bar</code> parameter. I then want to launch that URL using the "start" command.</p>
  
  <p>Adding quotes around the value for the SET operation is easy enough:</p>
  
  <pre><code>set myvar="http://example.com?foo=1&amp;bar="
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Windows includes the quotes in the actual value though (thanks Windows!):</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo %myvar%
  "http://example.com?foo=1&amp;bar=true"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know that I can strip quotes away from batch file arguments by using tilde:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo %~1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, I can't seem to do it to named variables:</p>
  
  <pre><code>echo %~myvar%
  %~myvar%
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What's the syntax for accomplishing this?</p>