I have a program BIL.exe that prompts for user four inputs (marked with pink below).
I would like to run this program from command line by specifying the inputs as arguments. Something like this:
.\BIL.exe "HOAL" 78 80 1
In a batch script I can do it as shown below. However this doesn't work in command line.
#echo off
set var1="HOAL"
set var2=78
set var3=80
set var4=1
(echo %var1% && echo %var2% && echo %var3% && echo %var4%)|BIL.exe
Does the solution differ between CMD and powershell?
So given your confirmation that stdin from file worked means that the solution should be simple:
batch_name.cmd
#echo off
(echo %1&echo %2&echo %3&echo %4)|bil.exe
it sends the output in list format. so you should be able to run the batch as:
batch_name.cmd "HOAL" 78 80 1
keep in mind, I am not stripping outside quotations, as it seems that those are used by the executable. If not, then change to:
#echo off
(echo %~1&echo %~2&echo %~3&echo %~4)|bil.exe
As you never need to set anything in relation to the variable name, we simply do not use variables as they come as input meta variables from your input.
Related
I tried to start a exe (jtag console) from a batch file and feed the data from a file to it. This worked well with:
nios2-terminal.exe < test.txt
But there are null chars (0x00) in this file. The chars after the null chars are not passed to the exe, just more zeros, probably because of null terminated strings.
So I splitted the file in 4 files where just the last char is a null and feeded them one after another. The problem is I have to kill the processes, because they wont do it thereself. I need to use the start command.
But I don't know how to feed the file not to the start command but to the exe. This does probably the first:
start /d %path% nios2-terminal.exe < test0.txt
ping 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 1 > nul REM// 1ms delay, tried more, too
taskkill /f /im nios2-terminal.exe
start /d %path% nios2-terminal.exe < test1.txt ...
As nios2-terminal.exe puts all chars from stdIn to the jtag of my FPGA, I thougth to use start /b /d %path% nios2-terminal.exe and then read all the files with type testx.txt.
When I do this manualy, I have to press Return first and then the first char I type is put on jtag. In a script I don get this working.
Is ther any other posibility like sending input to the running instance of nios2-terminal.exe or some alternative for the JTAG terminal nios2-terminal.exe, which doesn't mind NULL char inputs.
I hope I didn't missed any threat that allready covers this issue, but I found none.
Thanks a lot
edit:
The title says stdin and stdout redirect because I also want to redirect the output of the program to a file. But I think once I got how to redirect the input with the start command, I can handle this, too.
try this:
nios2-terminal.exe > test.txt
and if you want to append use this cmd:
nios2-terminal.exe >> test.txt
I am making a API for Batch. One of its functions is a colortext, which uses PowerShell (and findstr if PowerShell is not supported on the machine) to do its work. (It simply converts the batch color given, like 3C, converts it to PowerShell-friendly names, like DarkCyan and Red, and prints the text given in color using more things.)
However, when I try to set the foreground as F (White), for some reason it tries to execute it 2 or 4 times (depending if I have Delayed Expansion enabled or not).
It sometimes fails on the last run/try showing the same thing if the supposed %fcn% and %bcn% never were applied. (this also depends if I have Delayed Expansion enabled or not).
I only want this to execute one time (and not fail for whatever reason), but it's executing 2 or 4 times for some reason. How would I do/fix this program?
Here's the minimal code needed to reproduce this problem, assuming %bcn%, %fcn% and %text% are already set (let's say Cyan as %bcn% and White as %fcn%, and Should not happen as %text%):
#echo off
set bcn=Cyan
set fcn=White
set text="This should not work"
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set script=write-host %text% -ForegroundColor %fcn% -BackgroundColor %bcn%
if EXIST colortest.ps1 ( del colortest.ps1 )
echo %script% >> colortest.ps1
#echo on
#powershell -executionpolicy remotesigned -file colortest.ps1
#echo off
The output of this becomes:
If I do a color that works (like CD), with the same text:
EDIT: Since no one seems to say "Hey it's working perfectly", I meant about the second bogus execution, I know this works fine, I'm just trying to get rid of the bogus second execution.
Here is the entire code of the batch file (save it as bapi.bat and try to run "bapi colortext "This should not work" BF") in a pastebin:
http://pastebin.com/WyayVUVS
The problem can't be reproduced with the posted batch code and the values for the environment variables.
However some suggestions as partly also posted by aschipfl in his comment.
1. Deletion of a single file
The deletion of a single file can be done with either
if exist colortest.ps1 del colortest.ps1
or with
del colortest.ps1 2>nul
The first command line checks first if the file to delete exists and runs command DEL only if the file really exists.
The second command line runs the command DEL and redirects an error message written to handle STDERR to device NUL to suppress it. Command DEL outputs an error message if the file to delete does not exist at all.
On running just a single command after an IF or in a FOR loop it is really not necessary to write this command line in round brackets which define a command block. FOR and IF are designed for execution of a single command and using ( ... ) which defines a command block is just an extension of Windows command processor to be able to run multiple commands where a single command is expected by design.
2. Redirection to file with overwriting existing file
It is possible here to use just > instead of >> to create or overwrite colortest.ps1. This avoids the need to separately delete the file before.
See also the Microsoft article Using command redirection operators.
3. Space character between output text and redirection operator
On the command line
echo %script% >> colortest.ps1
there is a space character between environment variable reference %script% and redirection operator >>. This space character is also output by command ECHO and therefore also written into the file as trailing space.
This does not matter here, but often trailing spaces are not wanted in produced file. One solution is removing the space character and use:
echo %script%>> colortest.ps1
But this can result in an unexpected behavior if the string of environment variable script ends with a space and a single digit number in range of 1 to 9 as this results after preprocessing this command line before execution in 1>> colortest.ps1 or 2>> colortest.ps1, ... which is a redirection of handle 1 to 9 to file colortest.ps1 instead of printing 1 to 9 to handle STDOUT and finally to the file.
The solution is writing the redirection first and next the command
>>colortest.ps1 echo %script%
or use delayed expansion which would be here even better in case of script PowerShell script line contains special characters.
echo !script!>>colortest.ps1
The space character between >> and file name colortest.ps1 is ignored by Windows command interpreter.
4. Quoting parameter strings with special characters
The environment variable text could hold a text which requires double quoting this parameter string for correct processing by Windows command interpreter and by PowerShell. A space character (delimiter on command line) and the characters &()[]{}^=;!'+,`~<>| require often enclosing the entire parameter string in double quotes for being interpreted completely as literal text.
set "script=write-host "!text!" -ForegroundColor %fcn% -BackgroundColor %bcn%"
See also answer on Why is no string output with 'echo %var%' after using 'set var = text' on command line? why set "script=script line" is used instead of just set script=script line and why it does not matter how many double quotes are specified in the script line on assigning it to the environment variable.
5. Double quotes to output in text in PowerShell script file
To output also text containing 1 or more double quotes by the PowerShell script it is necessary to escape each double quote character with one more " before writing the text string into the script file colortest.ps1.
#echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions EnableDelayedExpansion
set "bcn=Cyan"
set "fcn=White"
set "text="This should not happen^^!""
set "text=!text:"=""!"
set "script=write-host "!text!" -ForegroundColor %fcn% -BackgroundColor %bcn%"
echo !script!>colortest.ps1
echo on
#powershell -executionpolicy remotesigned -file colortest.ps1
#echo off
endlocal
It can be seen here on this example that with delayed expansion already enabled on definition of text with a string containing also an exclamation mark to output as character additionally to the also to output two double quotes that the exclamation mark must be escaped with two caret characters ^^ for assigning the exclamation mark as literal character to environment variable text. That would not be necessary on definition of text before enabling delayed expansion.
#echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
set "text="This should not happen!""
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set "bcn=Cyan"
set "fcn=White"
set "text=!text:"=""!"
set "script=write-host "!text!" -ForegroundColor %fcn% -BackgroundColor %bcn%"
echo !script!>colortest.ps1
endlocal
echo on
#powershell -executionpolicy remotesigned -file colortest.ps1
#echo off
endlocal
For details about the commands SETLOCAL and ENDLOCAL see this answer which explains in detail how these two commands work.
This is because, for some random reason which didn't happen to the rest, the call command executed 2 times, the second without setting any %fcn% and %bcn% parameters, when something like call :label was used.
However, this does not happen with goto label.
My Problem
As there are a ton of threads that address 'using a batch file to return file modify date' (or delete files older than, etc) - let me first specify my issue.
I'm looking to create a batch (not PowerShell, etc) that will return the last modify date of a specific file given UNC path and filename.
Code, Attempt 1
I've taken a peek at a few potential solutions on other threads, but I've run into a number of unique issues. The first and most obvious solution for this would be the "ForFiles" command in batch. For example:
set myPath=\\myUNCpath
set myFile=myFileName.csv
forfiles /p "%myPath%" /m %myFile% /c "GoTo OldFile" /d -6
Thus, if the file is older than I want -- jump to a specific section of my batch for that. However, this yields the error:
ERROR: UNC paths (\machine\share) are not supported.
However, this cmd won't work due to the use of UNC (which is critical as this batch is called by system's task scheduler). So it seems like the 'ForFiles' cmd is out.
Code, Attempt 2
I could go a more round about way of doing it, but simply retrieving the last modified date of the file (which in batch would return a string). I can truncate the string to the necessary date values, convert to a date, and then compare to current date. To do that, I've also looked into just using a for loop such as:
set myFile=\\myUNCpath\myFileName.csv
echo %myFile%
pause
FOR %%f IN (%myFile%) DO SET myFileDate=%%~tf
echo %myFileDate%
pause
Though my first debug echo provides the proper full file name, my second debug just returns ECHO is off., which tells me it's either not finding the file or the for loop isn't returning the file date. Not sure why.
I've also tried minor changes to this just to double check environmental variable syntax:
FOR %%f IN (%myFile%) DO SET myFileDate=%%~ta
Returns %ta
And finally:
FOR %%f IN (%myFile%) DO SET myFileDate=%~ta
Which without the extra '%', just crashes the batch.
I'm really at a loss at this point. So any tips or guidance would be greatly appreciated!
Using forfiles to a UNC path can be used using PushD
For just echoing the file older than x in UNC path, simply just use
PushD %myPath% &&(
forfiles -s -m %myFile% -d -6 -c "cmd /c echo /q #file
) & PopD
Here is one way how to use goto if file older than x found in UNC path using your examples.
if not exist "C:\temp" mkdir C:\temp
if not exist "C:\temp\test.txt" echo.>"c:\temp\test.txt"
break>"c:\temp\test.txt"
set myPath=\\myUNCpath
set myFile=myFileName.csv
PushD %myPath% &&(
forfiles -s -m %myFile% -d -6 -c "cmd /c echo /q #file >> c:\temp\test.txt"
) & PopD
for /f %%i in ("C:\temp\test.txt") do set size=%%~zi
if %size% gtr 0 goto next
:next
Huge thanks to both #Squashman and #MadsTheMan for the help. Luckily this batch finally is the piece of code that I can take to my boss to push switching over to at least using PowerShell!
Anyway, for those of you looking for the best way to get a UNC path file's modify date, here is what I've come up with. Not very different than other threads (and a thanks goes out to Squashman for spotting my missing " " in the for loop).
set myFile=\\myUNCpath\myFileName.ext
FOR %%f IN ("%myFile%") DO SET myFileDate=%%~tf
::And if you'd like to try to do long winded calculations you can further break the dates down via...
set fileMonth=%myFileDate:~0,2%
set fileDay=%myFileDate:~3,2%
set fileYear=%myFileDate:~6,4%
set currentDate=%date%
set currentMonth=%currentDate:~4,2%
set currentDay=%currentDate:~7,2%
set currentYear=%currentDate:~10,4%
The plan was to then convert the strings to integers, and then use a switch-case block to determine if the variance between dates was acceptable... blah blah blah.
Long story short - if you are limited to batch (and not creating secondary files -- such as a csv or the temp file suggested by MadsTheMan) you're going to have a really long script on your hands that still might have flaws (like leap year, etc unless you're adding even MORE code), when you could just make the comparison calculation using one line of code in other programs.
I need to create output files that include the input I'm providing. For example, a run of the program might look like:
Input command: do_things
Things have been done.
Input command: stop_doing_things
Things are no longer being done.
Where "do_things" and "stop_doing_things" are input from the user.
How can I output all of the above to a file using command prompt functions?
It's not clear what environment using "script " command linux will open a new shell and save everything done it to
This works for you, if you run it at last...
CMD > D:\mycmdout.txt
In that case, maybe you can capture your input as a variable. Echo the variable into the >> mycmdout.txt, then procede with the actual commands, again piped into >> mycmdout.txt as Sunny suggested.
SET /P variable=EnterInputHere
echo %variable% >> mycmdout.txt
EDIT: Be sure to use double >> as to append result to file.
I am trying to display a full textfile in a batch file, but when I do it like this, it opens notepad.
#echo off
call YourText.txt
pause >nul
exit
I also tried
#echo off
more < YourText.txt
pause >nul
exit
Both with double quotes, and without. However, it doesn't work. Then, when I did it without #echo off it works, but it will display each line as:
C:\Documents and Settings\Gebruiker\Mijn documenten\others\Bureaublad YourTextline 1
C:\Documents and Settings\Gebruiker\Mijn documenten\others\Bureaublad YourTextline 2
I already tried the set /f command without any luck.
Does anybody know how to import a full text file through a batch file?
You're looking for type:
type YourFile.txt
If you want it to pause between screens full of text, combine it with more using the pipe | operator:
type YourFile.txt | more
or using more directly getting input from the text file or via redirection (first example courtesy of #MatthewStrawbridge in his comment):
more YourFile.txt
or
more < YourFile.txt