I've been trying to find a solution for this problem without any
success, therefore I'm posting here.

I've created a setup/deployment project in VS.NET 2003 to make a .MSI
containing my application. If I use the VS.NET registry editor to add
a string registry key containing an escaped character within brackets
"[\.]" I get a build error.

Even worse, whenever I add a string value that contains:
"[<something>]" <something> gets replaced by an empty string in the
registry value in the installation.

I know this feature is used by VS.NET to insert project properties
like [Manufacturer] but how do I disable it? I've tried to escape the
'[' and ']' without success.

For instance, adding a regular expression to a registry key in the
VS.NET registry editor:

^([a-zA-Z0-9\.\-])

Results in the build error:
ERROR: Invalid characters '^([a-zA-Z0-9\.\-\s])' in value for registry
value 'RegExp', located in 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\[Manufacturer]\

If I remove all the escaped characters "\.\-\s", it builds but then,
after installation, the registry value will only contain the string
"^()"

Does anyone know how to stop VS.NET from doing this expansion of
registry values containing '[<something>]'?

/Daniel Hegner