The command prompt complains that it is unable to recoqnize the command.So i was thinking i needed to escape something that looked like a start of a command to the echo with the ^ character.
This is the exact line:
echo Set link = Shell.CreateShortcut(DesktopPath & "\Beta.lnk")>>%temp%\CreateFirefoxBetaShortcut.vbs
I tried:
echo ^Set link = Shell.CreateShortcut(DesktopPath & "\Beta.lnk")>>%temp%\CreateFirefoxBetaShortcut.vbs
But no luck.Im puzzled by this because it correctly enters much more complex lines but for some reason it want's to treat this line as a command not a simple text.
I can post the full .vbs including the other lines if that helps somehow.
The ampersand ("&") character has a special meaning for "cmd". Therefore, it must be preceded with a caret ("^"), like this:
echo Set link = Shell.CreateShortcut(DesktopPath ^& "\Beta.lnk")>>%temp%\CreateFirefoxBetaShortcut.vbs
Related
I need to replace 400+ words with different hyperlinks in a rtf- or .docx-document.
I’ve made a script using keystrokes (cmd+f, esc etc), but the script takes forever and is not stable enough.
Using sed -i I’m able to do a replacement of the word, but not with hyperlink. Is this possible?
set theFile to choose file
set original to "foo"
set substitute to "VG"
set newlink to "https://www.vg.no"
do shell script "sed -i '' \"s|" & original & "|" & substitute & "|g\" " & quoted form of (POSIX path of theFile)
Here is something specific to try:
First, create a rich text document with the word 'foo' as its content (in TextEdit, as Word's output is an abomination). Save the file in the appropriate place and run this:
set theFile to ((path to desktop) as text) & "slink3.rtf"
set qptf to quoted form of POSIX path of theFile
set origStr to "foo"
set subStr to "VG"
set newlink to "https://www.vg.no"
do shell script "sed -i '' -e 's|" & origStr & "|" & subStr & "|' -e 's|VG|{{\\\\*\\\\fldinst{HYPERLINK \"https://www.vg.no/\"}}{\\\\fldrslt VG}}|' " & qptf
This expands to:
do shell script "sed -i '' -e 's|foo|VG|' -e 's|VG|{{\\\\*\\\\fldinst{HYPERLINK \"https://www.vg.no/\"}}{\\\\fldrslt VG}}|' '/Users/username/Desktop/slink3.rtf'"
The actual shell command which runs is:
% sed -i '' -e 's|foo|VG|' -e 's|VG|{{\\*\\fldinst{HYPERLINK "https://www.vg.no/"}}{\\fldrslt VG}}|' '/Users/username/Desktop/slink3.rtf'
What it does is first replace the string foo with the string VG, and then replace the string VG with VG as hyperlinked text.
NB TextEdit has a preference to display the raw rtf upon opening a file rather than the formatted text. If you do this with a document containing a single word, the structure is relatively clear. I recommend against even looking at a Word-generated document.
If you do this, you will see that the raw rtf uses a single backslash but both the shell and applescript require escaping which is why the script has \\\\.
Incidentally, I notice that you finish your sed search with 'g' but shouldn't this only run once per line? Consider removing it.
Obviously, I don't know your entire workflow but hopefully this matches the section you have posted.
Why is it that commands like this are often shown as being executing by echoing them? Typically echo would just treat the contents as a string and print it to output, which wouldn't execute it. Additionally, hash being the symbol for commenting out a command, makes this doubly confusing:
echo "##vso[task.setvariable variable=curProjVersion;isOutput=true]1.4.5"
Azure DevOps is listening to standard output of your task and interprets them when it finds the tag ##vso at the beginning of the line.
This is not something that is special to Powershell, you could set you variable from a js file like this:
console.log("##vso[task.setvariable variable=curProjVersion;isOutput=true]1.4.5");
All that matters is the standard output of your task.
Echo is a throwback to unix and bash. Echo is also nice way to output an array of strings without any quoting or commas.
echo one two three four
one
two
three
four
I want to create a folder with the name of the current date and time.
After searching a lot i found this which actually works.
Can someone explain what these batch commands do?
set timestamp=%DATE:/=-%#%TIME::=-%
set timestamp=%timestamp: =%
mkdir "%timestamp%"
Insert echo statements between the lines and you can see what the value of timestamp is
set timestamp=%DATE:/=-%#%TIME::=-%
echo %timestamp%
set timestamp=%timestamp: =%
echo %timestamp%
mkdir "%timestamp%"
Basically, the code is just removing the forward slash from the date and the colon from time since those are not valid directory names replacing them with hypens.
Read set /? Environment variable substitution to get a better idea.
set timestamp=%DATE:/=-%#%TIME::=-%
That's a string replacement.
1st:
%DATE:/=-% Replaces "/" character to "-" character in the DATE variable
(See: Echo %DATE% on your console)
2nd:
Adds the "#" character to the string after the DATE var and before the TIME var.
3rd:
%TIME::=-% Replaces ":" character to "-" character.
(See: Echo %Time% on your console)
set timestamp=%timestamp: =%
Next in that replacement replaces itself spaces to any characarter (so deletes spaces), but really any space is given so is not necessary in your example code.
You can learn more about Variable string replacement here: http://ss64.com/nt/syntax-replace.html
Also you can simplify your code 'cause no need to setting the value first:
mkdir "%DATE:/=-%#%TIME::=-%"
I noticed that when I use echo to print something to a file in DOS, a space is appended to the string. I need to print the string without the trailing space. Is there a way to do that, or as a workaround, remove trailing spaces from the file?
If I understood the problem correctly, you wrote the trailing space.
Instead of
echo string > file
use
echo string>file
Assuming you're talking about cmd.exe rather than the actual (rather outdated) MSDOS, there are a number of ways to do this, the first being:
echo Here is some text>output.txt
but I find that somewhat less than readable since I'm used to being able to clearly delineate 'arguments' on the command line.
Alternatively, there's nothing stopping you from swapping around the order of your command line:
>output.txt echo Here is some text
which will allow you to still separate the arguments whilst not having extraneous spaces put in your output file.
In fact, I've often used this method for blocks of code as well:
>output.txt (
echo hello
echo goodbye
)
which will write both lines to the file. I find it preferable in that case since you know right at the start where the output is going, rather than having to go and look at the end of the code block.
Some quick searching brought me this link
It seems you have multiple options. If you want to parse the file post-echo using a script, you could consider this VBScript
Do While Not WScript.StdIn.AtEndOfStream
WScript.Echo RTrim(WScript.StdIn.ReadLine)
Loop
which loops, line by line through a file(usually .txt), and performs RTrim, which strips trailing spaces.
Cheers
How to force echo command to output a tab character in MS nmake makefile?
Verbatim tabs inserted right into a string after echo command are removed by nmake and don't show up in the output file.
all :
#echo I WANT TO OUTPUT THE <TAB> CHARACTER HERE! > output.txt
You can use a variable with TAB char. Put this lines in your .bat file:
set tab=[stroke TAB char from your keyboard]
echo a%tab%b>yourfile.txt
Doing so, yourfile.txt will have text a[TAB]b
As a workaround, you can create a file containing the tab character, named input.txt (not using nmake), and then say:
all :
#copy /b input.txt output.txt
I assume you already have tried to put the tab inside quotes?
all:
#echo "<TAB>" > output.txt
DOS and Windows have ugly text support in native batch files :).
Here is nice way to do your task:
install Python interpretator
write simple script which appends character with specified code to file
call script wherever you want :)
Simple script:
'''
append_char.py - appends character with specified code to end of file
Usage: append_char.py filename charcode
'''
import os
import sys
filename = sys.argv[1]
assert os.path.exists(filename)
charcode = int(sys.argv[2])
assert 0 <= charcode <= 255
fh = open(filename, 'ab')
fh.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
fh.write(chr(charcode))
fh.close()
using this script from batch file you can create any possible file in universe :)
output.txt:
<<output.txt
I WANT TO OUTPUT THE <TAB> CHARACTER HERE!
<<KEEP
<TAB> represents a literal tab character here of course.
I had the same need. I used the answer using the quotes around the character and just took it one step further.
{tab} means pressing the keyboard tab key in the text editor.
SET tab="{tab}"
SET tab=%tab:~1,1%
The second line extracts the middle character from the quoted string.
Now you can use the %tab% variable with ECHO and, I suspect, anywhere else it's needed.
ECHO %tab%This text is indented, preceded by a tab.
I suspect this technique could be used with other problem characters as well.