Sorry, no – I had just copy/edit/pasted what was originally posted by @FredThompsonII , and didn’t notice that it was missing a \ before the *. For your example, I believe it should be:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Notepad++]
@="Edit with &Notepad++"
"Icon"="C:\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe,0"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Notepad++\command]
@="C:\\Notepad++\\Notepad++.exe \"%L\""

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Aside: I believe what happened is that because the original poster did not indent the .reg text four spaces in the forum, the forum software converted the quotes to “smart quotes” (which I noticed and fixed) and also converted the \* to a plain * – it interpreted it as escaping the * character (which is used to start/stop emphasis and bold) instead of as wanting a literal \*. It also probably changed the \\ in the paths to \, and possibly converted \" to just “. That’s why Markdown provides the indenting feature for code blocks – to tell Markdown to treat the text as purely literal. I believe I have correctly edited your example to include all the correct escaping and quotes.

In case it’s not, here’s my example from my registry: it’s for the “txtfile” entry, rather than the “*” entry, but it shows the syntax properly (because I know this association works):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile\shell\Notepad++]
@="Notepad++"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfile\shell\Notepad++\command]
@="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe \"%1\""

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edit: note: see this post for a link describing %1 vs %L in registry entries.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell\Notepad++]
@=“Edit with &Notepad++”
“Icon”=“C:\Notepad++\notepad++.exe,0”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell\Notepad++\Command]
@=“C:\Notepad++\Notepad++.exe "%L"”

Thanks!

notepad++.exe a file here.txt

would be ambiguous as to whether it’s opening one file called a file here.txt with spaces in the name, or whether it’s opening three files – one called a, one called file, and one called here.txt.

If all four files existed, it would be impossible to grok your intention.

Now, it requires

notepad++.exe "a file here.txt"

to tell it that it’s one filename, and will assume multiple filenames if there aren’t quotes around it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell\Notepad++]
@="Edit with &Notepad++"
"Icon"="C:\Portable\- Linked\Notepad++\notepad++.exe,0"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*\shell\Notepad++\Command]
@="C:\Portable\- Linked\Notepad++\Notepad++.exe \"%L\""

The “why” = the author changed handling of command-line arguments to be more consistent with other windows programs, where filenames with spaces on the command line must be surrounded by quotes to be interpreted as a single filename.