Good day to all. After google-ing and trying various solutions, I'm a bit stuck with the following easy (at least it seemed so) task:
I have a powershell variable, say:
$simpleString = "Hello World and stuff"
I'm testing an Android app via ADB, where I need to pass this variable's value as a string:
.\adb.exe shell input text "$simpleString"
I get error
.\adb.exe : Error: Invalid arguments for command: text
followed by reminder on how to use "input" command by adb.
Update:
I've also tried the following workaround:
$myCmd = Write-output "adb.exe shell input text `"$simpleString`""
thus building a valid command for CMD and then run it via:
cmd /c $myCmd
but I still get same issue
Any help will be much appreciated, thank you.
OK, after some additional trial and error, I found a solution that worked for me (using back-ticks, single quotes and "wrapping" the command into another variable:
$myCmd = Write-output "adb.exe shell input text `'$simpleString`'"
& cmd /c $myCmd
Spelling-out the first command for easier perception:
$myCmd = Write-output {double quotes}adb.exe shell input text {back-tick}{single quote}$simpleString{back-tick}{single quote}{double quotes}
Related
Ex:
cmd /C start C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe
I'm trying to use cmd to start a file but since there are spaces in the path, cmd is throwing an error after Bob.
Error:
"Windows cannot find C:\Users\Bob. Make sure you typed the name
correctly, then try again."
The system cannot find the file C:\Users\Bob.
Its simply failing to accept the spaces. It's driving me crazy because I'm spoiled with C# working out of the box. I don't know much about this, I have been spending way too much time trying to figure this out. Some help would be greatly appreciated.
In order for a path that contains spaces to be recognized as a single path (argument), it must be quoted.
In order for an executable to execute in the current console window, synchronously, with its streams connected to the calling shell, it must be invoked directly, not via start.
Direct invocation from cmd.exe (only "..." quoting supported):
"C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe"
From PowerShell:
& 'C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe'
Note:
PowerShell also supports '...' strings (single-quoted), which are verbatim strings that are preferable to "..." (double-quoted) ones if you do not require expansion of variables (string interpolation) - see the conceptual about_Quoting_Rules help topic.
For syntactic reasons, PowerShell requires the use of &, the call operator to invoke commands that are quoted and/or contain variable references - see this answer for details.
By contrast, use start in cmd.exe / Start-Process in PowerShell (whose built-in alias is also start) to launch an executable in a new window (on Windows), asynchronously, with no (direct) ability to capture the launched executable's output:
From cmd.exe:
start "title" "C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe"
Note:
Specifying "title" - i.e. a self-chosen (console) window title - is required for syntactic reasons in this case: without it, the double-quoted path itself would be interpreted as the window title, and the - implied - executable to launch would be another cmd.exe instance.
Note that if you launch a GUI application this way, the title argument is irrelevant, because no new console window is created.
Conversely, if you launch a console application specified by double-quoted path and therefore must use a title argument, note that "" will result in the new window having no title.
From PowerShell (parameter -FilePath is positionally implied):
Start-Process 'C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe'
Note:
Start-Process does not support specifying a window title, so you may want to call cmd.exe's internal start command for that (or other features not supported by Start-Process, such as specifying the process priority).
To work around quoting problems, invoke cmd.exe's start from PowerShell by passing the entire start command as a single string to cmd /c:
cmd /c 'start "title" "C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe"'
cmd /C start "C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\test.exe"
Quotes are your friend. Sometimes even double quotes are too!
Seems like cmd won't work for me. Powershell worked with this script:
$env:Path += ";C:\Users\Bob Builder\Desktop\New Folder\"
test.exe
I want to run a single AutoHotkey command. A script seems kindof overkill.
In bash and powershell, you can run a command by passing it in as a string to the shell:
pwsh -Command ls
bash -c ls
Is there a way to do this with AutoHotKey.exe? In the documentation, all I see is that you can pass the name of a script file to execute. If powershell supported process substitution <(ls), I could do
AutoHotKey.exe <(echo "ls")
But I don't think there's a way to do this in powershell.
Is there another way other than creating a complicated version of process substitution myself?
The linked docs state:
[v1.1.17+]: Specify an asterisk (*) for the filename to read the script text from standard input (stdin). For an example, see ExecScript().
For instance, from PowerShell:
'MsgBox % "Hello, world."' | AutoHotKey.exe *
I'm not sure if you're looking for what the other answer states, or then for this what I'm about to write:
You can pass arguments into an AHK script and those arguments are then found from the built in variable A_Args.
Example AHK script:
for each, arg in A_Args
output .= arg "`n"
MsgBox, % output
PowerShell command:
& "C:\Path\To\My\Script.ahk" arg1 arg2 "this is the 3rd argument" arg4
This would be if you have AHK installed. If you have some portable AHK setup, you'd pass in the example script to AutoHotkey.exe and then the desired arguments.
I have a line that works in cmd prompt but I cant convert it to work powershell, I can run it without errors in powershell but it doesnt function how it does in cmd prompt
"C:\Program Files\Curl\curl-7.69.1-win64-mingw\bin\curl.exe" -F file=#C:\Documents\some.txt http://localhost/fileupload.php
I fixed it in case anyone comes across this one day
. ""C:\Program Files\Curl\curl-7.69.1-win64-mingw\bin\curl.exe"" -F ""file=#C:\Documents\some.txt http://localhost/fileupload.php""
I think your file=#C:\Doc... needs quotations. file=#"C:\Doc..."
I have a simple Powershell script that I execute during an Octopus Deploy installation. This line works fine:
& $exe install --autostart
I runs an application identified by $exe variable with command line arguments "install --autostart".
Now I need to expand command line arguments with a value evaluated from a variable:
& $exe install --autostart -servicename=$serviceName
"$serviceName" is the variable that gets its value during the script execution. Whatever I do it's passed to the line above by variable name, not the value, e.g. it's passed as "$serviceName". I tried single and double quotes, nothing helps. As long it's a command invocation (triggered by the "&" symbol in the beginnging of the line), the rest of the line is interpreted verbatim, no variable substitions.
I used last couple of hours trying to figure this out and this is driving me mad. Any tips are appreciated.
I just did some testing on my side and it looks like if you'd like the variable passed in to the command to be evaluated as a variable it needs whitespace on both sides. So you would want to define your variable as $serviceName = "-servicename=*name*" or if that is not possible then create a new variable just before running the command
$tmpServicename = "-servicename=$($serviceName)"
& $exe install --autostart $tmpServiceName
I am using mr on Windows and it allows running arbitrary commands before/after any repository action. As far as I can see this is done simply by invoking perl's system function. However something seems very wrong with my setup: when making mr run the following batch file, located in d:
#echo off
copy /Y foo.bat bar.bat
I get errors on the most basic windows commands:
d:/foo.bat: line 1: #echo: command not found
d:/foo.bat: line 2: copy: command not found
To make sure mr isn't the problem, I ran perl -e 'system( "d:/foo.bat" )' but the output is the same.
Using xcopy instead of copy, it seems the xcopy command is found since the output is now
d:/foo.bat: line 1: #echo: command not found
Invalid number of parameters
However I have no idea what could be wrong with the parameters. I figured maybe the problem is the batch file hasn't full access to the standard command environment so I tried running it explicitly via perl -e 'system( "cmd /c d:\foo.bat" )' but that just starts cmd and does not run the command (I have to exit the command line to get back to the one where I was).
What is wrong here? A detailed explanation would be great. Also, how do I solve this? I prefer a solution that leaves the batch file as is.
The echo directive is executed directly by the running command-prompt instance.
But perl is launching a new process with your command. You need to run your script within a cmd instance, for those commands to work.
Your cmd /c must work. Check if you have spaces in the path you are supplying to it.
You can use a parametrized way of passing arguments,
#array = qw("/c", "path/to/xyz.bat");
system("cmd.exe", #array);
The echo directive is not an executable and hence, it errors out.
The same is true of the copy command also. It is not an executable, while xcopy.exe is.