The install_repo.bat script in version 1.0 builds up its argument word by word and then puts double quotes around the value thereby built up wherever it is used. However, this implementation makes using the script kind of weird. On Windows I have to quote the command anyway if it contains spaces, e.g., "%MAVEN_HOME%\bin\install_repo.bat" and I would expect to have to quote its argument for similar reasons. But as it stands now, install_repo.bat requires the following quoting syntax if both MAVEN_HOME and HOME (or HOMEPATH) contain spaces: "%MAVEN_HOME%\bin\install_repo.bat" %HOME%\.maven\repository Note the inconsistency in quoting. The Windows batch language doesn't treat quotes the way most shells do; the quotes are literally part of the string rather than just a meta-character that signifies that contained whitespace is literal rather than a command or argument separator. The syntax %~1 can be used to produce a non-quoted and fully-path-expanced version of whatever argument %1 was, at least in more recent versions of Windows (2000, XP, 2003). No guarantees that this feature is present in Windows 9x....