I was just experimenting with a PowerShell v2 session (instead of the basic Command Prompt) and got the following:
PS C:\_Projects> svn diff -r {2010-11-22}:HEAD svn: Syntax error in revision argument '-encodedCommand' If the revision range is enclosed in quotes, it works properly: PS C:\_Projects> svn diff -r "{2010-11-22}:HEAD" You can also escape the curly braces with the backtick character. PS C:\_Projects> svn diff -r `{2010-11-22`}:HEAD I believe the issue is specifically with the curly braces {}, as those denote a code block in PowerShell. Using a revision range of 3000:HEAD does not require that the range be enclosed in quotes, but I'm going to try to get in the habit of just quoting the revision range regardless. Command Prompt works either way - quoted or unquoted, doesn't matter. I'm on XP, it's probably an issue on newer versions of Windows as well. Not sure how many folks out there are actually using svn.exe on Windows in PowerShell, but it's in the list archive now in case anyone has a similar issue.