using quotes in sas macro filename pipe - macros

I am using the following Macro that uses filename pipe. But get an error saying invalid option name "dir", etc. I suspect it could be due to the quotes while defining filename and pipe. I guess it recognizes it as an option. I tried to remove the quote, removing %bquote and having just the double quote, but still keep getting the errors.
I am using Windows, but will also be running it remotely on Linux. Any thoughts would be deeply appreciated.
%macro setprogvar(dateval);
%global date;
%let date=&dateval;
%put &date;
%put &dateval;
%let filepath = %bquote("C:\Research\SASDataSets\bulk all data &date");
filename CDR_Bulk pipe "dir &filepath /a:-d-h-s /b /s";
%mend setprogvar;
%setprogvar(20100331);
***LOG************
1 filename CDR_Bulk pipe "dir &filepath /a:-d-h-s /b /s";
---
23
ERROR 23-2: Invalid option name dir.
1 ! filename CDR_Bulk pipe "dir &filepath /a:-d-h-s /b /s";
-
23
ERROR 23-2: Invalid option name a.

The filepath Macro variable needs wrapping in double-quotes as it contains spaces. But as your string is double-quoted, you need double-double-quotes...
filename CDR_Bulk pipe "dir ""&filepath"" /a:-d-h-s /b /s";

Try changing %bquote in your macro to %str().
%Str() works during macro compile time, and should mask the double quote marks.
HTH

Related

Execute a bat file with a variable name in the path

I am having a problem executing a powershell script where I want to point to different versions of a bat file based on some arguments
Hard coding the path as follows works with no issues:
& 'C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2022a\bin\mcc.bat' -W $command -T link:exe ...
but replacing a folder name with a variable causes it to fail:
$Matlab_version = "R2022a"
& 'C:\Program Files\MATLAB\$Matlab_version\bin\mcc.bat' -W $command -T link:exe
with the following output:
& : The term 'C:\Program Files\MATLAB\%$Matlab_version%\bin\mcc.bat' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:3
+ & 'C:\Program Files\MATLAB\%$Matlab_version%\bin\mcc.bat' -W $comman ...
I've tried even creating a variable with the path name
$mcc_loc = & 'C:\Program Files\MATLAB\$Matlab_version\bin\mcc.bat'
Write-Host $mcc_loc
which produces a string with the correct path. Any help is greatly appreciated. My dumb solution is to have an if statement for each $Matlab_version and hard code it in there but I'm sure there has to be a more elegant solution
It's because you are using single quotation marks.
variables will not be interpreted within single marks, everything will be taken as a literal string.
use double quotes instead when passing in variables mid string.
example:
You need to change the single quote ' to double quote "
Double-quoted strings
A string enclosed in double quotation marks is an expandable string. Variable names preceded by a dollar sign ($) are replaced with the variable's value before the string is passed to the command for processing.
$Matlab_version = "R2022a"
& "C:\Program Files\MATLAB\$Matlab_version\bin\mcc.bat" -W $command -T link:exe
See about_Quoting_Rules

Passing a semicolon as a parameter to a .bat file from both cmd and PowerShell

This question seems to be rather simple, but even after searching the web for a couple of hours, I was not able to find a solution...
I have a batch file test.bat
set MY_VARIABLE=%~1
echo %MY_VARIABLE%
The point is that I want to call this programm with a semicolon as input parameter, i.e.,
.\test.bat ";",
from both cmd and Windows PowerShell. While this works fine from cmd, PowerShell does not seem to get anything as an input. Is there any way to make this work for both simultaneously?
This is because of command line syntax. The semicolon is one of multiple delimiters, that split the command line into words: a;b would be interpreted as two separate arguments a (%1) and b (%2).
Therefore, quotes are required. Since Powershell uses quotes for string literals (Powershell does its own re-quoting behind the scenes when passing arguments), you need to include them in the string:
.\test.bat '";"'
# or
.\test.bat "`";`""
Or as #mklement0 pointed out, the stop-parsing symbol --% would also be an option:
.\test.bat --% ";"
Note that this is specific to Powershell syntax.
In CMD, this will suffice:
test.bat ";"

Perl SYSTEM command fails with "Bad file descriptor" when running via Jenkins

I have a simple system command to copy file from one folder to another:
my $cmd = "xcopy /Y c:\DBs\Support\db.bak c:\jenkins\workdir\sql-bak-files";
When I try to run the following system commands, all fails:
1. my $res = qx/$cmd/;
2. my $res = qx($cmd);
3. using back ticks
All tries returned the error: Error number -1, error message: "Bad file descriptor".
When trying to use system($cmd) the error was Error number 65280, error message: "No such file or directory".
This perl code is running via Jenkins (ver 2.190.1) and perl v5.26.0.
This problem started after migrating the code from mercurial to git, but I don't think it's related.
It worked before, but now always fail :(
A backslash has a special meaning in a Perl quoted string. It is used to escape the following character - to "turn off" any special meaning. If you want to use a backslash in a Perl quoted string, then you need to use another backslash to escape it.
my $cmd = 'xcopy /Y c:\\DBs\\Support\\db.bak c:\\jenkins\\workdir\\sql-bak-files';
Alternatively, Perl recognises forward slashes in Windows paths, so it might be easier to replace your code with this:
my $cmd = 'xcopy /Y c:/DBs/Support/db.bak c:/jenkins/workdir/sql-bak-files';
Note that in both cases I have replaced your double-quotes with single-quotes. This has no effect on your problem, but it seems strange to use double-quoted strings if you're not using any of their special characteristics (like the expansion of variables).
Update: To debug a problem like this, you can try printing the string.
$ perl -E'say "xcopy /Y c:\DBs\Support\db.bak c:\jenkins\workdir\sql-bak-files"'
xcopy /Y c:DBsSupportdb.bak c:jenkinsworkdirsql-bak-files

tcl exec to open a program with agruments

I want to open a text file in notepad++ in a particular line number. If I do this in cmdline the command should be:
start notepad++ "F:\Path\test.txt" -n100
And it is working fine from command line. Now I have to do this from tcl. But I can't make this command work with exec. When I try to execute this:
exec "start notepad++ \"F:\Path\test.txt\" -n100"
I am getting this error:
couldn't execute "start notepad++ "F:\Path\test.txt" -n100": no such file or directory.
What am I missing. Please guide.
Similar to this question:
exec {*}[auto_execok start] notepad++ F:/Path/test.txt -n10
First, you need to supply each argument of the command as separate values, instead of a single string/list. Next, to mimic the start command, you would need to use {*}[auto_execok start].
I also used forward slashes instead of backslashes, since you would get a first level substitution and get F:Path est.txt.
EDIT: It escaped me that you could keep the backslashes if you used braces to prevent substitution:
exec {*}[auto_execok start] notepad++ {F:\Path\test.txt} -n10
You can simply surround the entire exec statement in curly braces. Like this:
catch {exec start notepad++.exe f:\Path\test.txt -n10}
I haven't found a perfect solution to this yet. All my execs seem to be different from each other. On windows there are various issues.
Preserving double quotes around filename (or other) arguments.
e.g. in tasklist /fi "pid eq 2060" /nh the quotes are required.
Preserving spaces in filename arguments.
Preserving backslash characters in filename arguments.
[Internally, Windows doesn't care whether pathnames have / or \, but some programs will parse the filename arguments and expect the backslash character].
The following will handle the backslashes and preserve spaces, but will not handle double-quoted arguments. This method is easy to use. You can build up the command line using list and lappend.
set cmd [list notepad]
set fn "C:\\test 1.txt"
lappend cmd $fn
exec {*}$cmd
Using a string variable rather than a list allows preservation of quoted arguments:
set cmd [auto_execok start]
append cmd " notepad"
append cmd " \"C:\\test 1.txt\""
exec {*}$cmd
Note that if you need to supply the full path to the command to be executed, it often needs to be quoted also due to spaces in the pathname:
set cmd "\"C:\\Program Files\\mystuff\\my stuff.exe\" "

Recursive file copy and rename on the Vista command line

I'm trying to recurse through my music directory and copy every file called folder.jpg to a file in the same directory called cover.jpg.
I've tried variations of suggestions in this question such as this:
for /r %i in (folder.jpg) do copy %i cover.jpg
Resulting in "The system cannot find the file specified."
How can I solve this problem?
Edit
Here's what I ended up going with:
for /r %i in (folder.jpg) do copy "%i" "%~picover.jpg"
Try this:
for /f "usebackq delims==" %I in (`dir /b /s ^| findstr folder.jpg`) do copy "%I" "%~pIcover.jpg"
Decoder Ring:
usebackq :: run the command in the backquotes and use the output as the input for the loop
delims== :: use the equal sign as a delimeter. Really you could use any character that isn't valid in a file name
dir /b /s :: do a recursive directory listing only outputting the bare file names
^| :: ^ escapes the pipe character, the pipe - well pipes the output from the first command to the second
findstr :: searches the input for matching lines, and only outputs them
%~pI :: the tilde p instructs the variable expansion to only output the path rather than full file name + path. Note, this includes a trailing \
I hope this helps!
You are missing double-quotes on the copy command.
The %i variable will be holding the full-path to the file -- which may contain spaces.
Try using:
for /r %i in (folder.jpg) do copy "%i" cover.jpg
You probably don't have any files in your music folder called folder.jpg so it fails right?
I tried this in mymusic folder with a dummy file called folder.jpg and it copied it normally. ;)
Edit:
Kishi is right, you are missing the double quotes on the second %i
PowerShell must replace CMD. It is inevitable and righteous. And it's my job to help it along...
gci -r . folder.jpg | % { copy $_.FullName ([IO.Path]::Combine( $_.Directory.FullName, "cover.jpg" )) }
You could just use xcopy with the /s flag...
EDIT:
My bad - didn't read the question properly. Xcopy with /s will help when just copying the files to a fixed destination.