I am currently trying to convert a series of batch files to powershell scripts. I would like to run a compiler for the source files that exist in a directory, recursively. The compiler requires a long list of arguments. The catch is, I want the arguments to be variable so I can change them as needed. This is a typical call from the batch file (simplified for readability and length):
"C:\PICC Compilers\picc18.exe" --pass1
"C:\Src Files\somefile.c"
"-IC:\Include Files" "-IC:\Header
Files" -P
--runtime=default,+clear,+init,-keep,+download,+stackwarn,-config,+clib,-plib
--opt=default,+asm,-speed,+space,9 --warn=0 --debugger=realice -Blarge --double=24 --cp=16 -g --asmlist "--errformat=Error [%n] %f; %l.%c
%s" "--msgformat=Advisory[%n] %s" --OBJDIR="C:\Built Files"
"--warnformat=Warning [%n] %f; %l.%c %s"
This command executes fine when included in a batch file, but I start getting errors when I copy and paste the command into powershell. This is only my second day working with powershell, but I have developed with .NET in the past. I have managed to scrape together the following attempt:
$srcFiles = Get-ChildItem . -Recurse -Include "*.c"
$srcFiles | % {
$argList = "--pass1 " + $_.FullName;
$argList += "-IC:\Include Files -IC:\Header Files -P --runtime=default,+clear,+init,-keep,+download,+stackwarn,-config,+clib,-plib --opt=default,+asm,-speed,+space,9 --warn=0 --debugger=realice -Blarge --double=24 --cp=16 -g --asmlist '--errformat=Error [%n] %f; %l.%c %s' '--msgformat=Advisory[%n] %s' '--warnformat=Warning [%n] %f; %l.%c %s"
$argList += "--OBJDIR=" + $_.DirectoryName;
&"C:\PICC Compilers\picc18.exe" $argList }
I know that I probably have multiple issues with the above code, namely how to pass arguments and how I am dealing with the quotes in the argument list. Incorrect as it is, it should illustrate what I am trying to achieve. Any suggestions on where to start?
Calling command line applications from PowerShell might be really tricky. Several weeks ago #Jaykul wrote great blog post The problem with calling legacy/native apps from PowerShell where he describes gotchas which people will meet in this situations. And there is of course solution too ;)
edit - correct url
The article is no more available, so it's only possible to see that through web.archive.org - see cached article
Make $arglist an array instead of a string. A single string will always be passed as a single argument which is what you don't want here.
Related
I'm using Kalles' Fraktaler on Windows 10 to render images of the Mandelbrot set. Bundled with KF is a program to take a single parameter file and beak it into multiple tiles for easier rendering.
The output for the tiling program is multiple files with the following naming scheme: name-0000-0000.kfr, name-0000-0000.kfs, where the name can be anything and the numbers increment as needed.
The .kfr files are the parameter files.
The .kfs files are the settings files.
After I have these generated parameter and setting files, I can execute KF on the command line with the following arguments:
kf.exe -s name-0000-0000.kfs -l name-0000-0000.kfr -p name-0000-0000.png
Doing this for every pair of parameter and setting files works perfectly fine, taking the input files and saving the render to name-0000-0000.png
I asked the developer for an example PowerShell script to automate the process for when there are dozens or more of the files that need to be rendered, and this is what he gave me. The script needs to be run from the same directory as the files are stored.
Get-ChildItem "." -Filter *.kfr |
Foreach-Object {
$kfr = $_.FullName
$kfs = $kfr.replace("kfr", "kfs")
$png = $kfr.replace("kfr", "png")
C:/path/to/kf.exe -s $kfs -l $kfr -p $png
}
Unfortunately, I've tried every variation of this script that I could think of, and nothing gives me any results. I have already allowed unsigned scripts to be run on my computer. I would greatly appreciate some help on this.
(PowerShell is nice and flexible - but only when you use it to invoke only PowerShell commands rather than running native executables. For example, to run a program in the current directory you need to prefix the program's name with ./ - ostensibly this is done for safety and I assume for similarity to Unix shells, but it's the first in a long list of gotchas for anyone wanting to use PowerShell for tasks that would be trivial in old-school batch files)
Anyway, you need to use Invoke-Command or Start-Process.
I've changed your script from using a piped expression into an easier-to-digest loop (and invoking .NET's Path.ChangeExtension directly because PowerShell's built-in string match-and-replace syntax is too arcane for me):
$kfrFiles = Get-ChildItem "." -Filter "*.kfr"
foreach ( $kfrFile in $kfrFiles ) {
$kfr = $kfrFile.Name
$kfs = [System.IO.Path]::ChangeExtension( $kfrFile.Name, "kfs" )
$png = [System.IO.Path]::ChangeExtension( $kfrFile.Name, "png" )
Start-Process -FilePath "C:\path\to\kfs.exe" -ArgumentList "-s $kfs", "-l $kf", "-p $png" -Wait
}
The -Wait option will wait for the kfs.exe program to finish before starting the next instance - otherwise if you have hundreds of .kfr files then you'll end-up with hundreds of kfr processes running concurrently.
I don't know how to allow concurrent processes but impose a limit on the maximum-number of concurrent processes in PowerShell. It is possible, just complicated.
I am trying to automate a procedure that uses SVN, and I am trying to teach myself PowerShell (and scripting) in the process.
I set up a PowerShell script that reads values for revision numbers and my folder path, like this:
$GetSVN = read-host "Enter the SVN folder path: "
$RevStart = read-host "Enter the starting revision: "
$RevEnd = read-host "Enter the ending revision: "
It then calls SVN and (tries to) pass the parameters.
Here's my problem: When I try to call SVN as follows:
& "c:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\svn.exe" "-log -r $RevStart`:$RevEnd $GetSVN"
I get the following message:
svn: E205000: Non-numeric limit argument given
svn: E200004: Could not convert 'og -r BASE:#### [SVN file path]' into a number
Okay, fine. I tried adding an extra space before "-log". But when I do that, here's what happens:
Unknown subcommand: ' -log -r BASE:#### [SVN file path]'
Huh?!? What's going on with this? I've tried various variations of this, all to no avail. I can't find an answer to this anywhere. Does anyone have any insight?
I am a newbie to PowerShell scripting, so feel free to answer as such.
Thanks in advance . . .
Your call is wrong, multiple parameters are grouped as one. Better and correct way to do it is this:
set-alias svn "c:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\svn.exe"
svn log -r $RevStart`:$RevEnd $GetSVN
Setting alias is cosmetics. The real problem were " placement.
I’m trying to use AgeStore to remove some expired symbol files. I’ve written a Powershell script in which the AgeStore command works sometimes, but, not always.
For example, my symbol store contains symbol files dating back to 2010. I’d like to clean out the “expired” symbols because they are no longer needed. To that end, I use the -date command line argument to specify “-date=10-01-2010”. Additionally, I use the “-l” switch to force AgeStore to
Causes AgeStore not to delete any files, but merely to list all the
files that would be deleted if this same command were run without the
-l option.
Here’s a snippet of the script code that runs…
$AgeStore = "$DebuggingToolsPath\AgeStore"
$asArgs = "`"$SymbolStorePath`" -date=$CutoffDate -s -y "
if ($WhatIf.IsPresent) { $asArgs += "-l" }
# determine size of the symbol store before delete operation.
Write-Verbose ">> Calculating current size of $SymbolStorePath before deletion.`n" -Verbose
">> $SymbolStorePath currently uses {0:0,0.00} GB`n" -f (((Get-ChildItem -R $SymbolStorePath | measure-object length -Sum ).Sum / 1GB))
Write-Verbose ">> Please wait...processing`n`n" -Verbose
& $AgeStore $asArgs
When the above code runs, it returns the following output…
processing all files last accessed before 10-01-2010 12:00 AM
0 bytes would be deleted
The program 'RemoveOldDebugSymbols.ps1: PowerShell Script' has exited
with code 0 (0x0).
I have verified that there are symbol files with dates earlier than “10-01-2010” in the symbol store. I’ve subsequently tried the same experiment with a different cutoff date, “11-01-2015” and the output indicates that there are several files it would have deleted, but, not those that are from 2010. I’m at a loss as to what may cause the discrepancy.
Has anyone tried to delete symbol files from a symbol store using AgeStore? If so, have you run into this problem? How did you resolve it?
I’ve tried to resolve this many different ways using AgeStore. For the sake of moving forward with a project, I’ve decided to rewrite the script to use the SymStore command with a delete transaction. Basically, I created a list of the debug symbol transactions that should be removed and wrote a loop that iterates over the list and deletes each entry one at a time.
Hope this is helpful for anyone who runs into the same problems.
EDIT: Per request....I cannot post the entire script, but, I used the following code in a loop as a replacement for the AgeStore command.
$ssArgs = ".\symstore.exe del /i $SymbolEntryTransactionID /s `"$SymbolStorePath`""
Invoke-Expression $ssArgs
My command line is this (powershell):
$7z ="`"c:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe`""
&$7z a -r -ttar -bd -so . | &$7z a -r -txz -bd $archive -si
The produced archive file indeed contains a tar file, but that tar file is corrupt.
Note, that breaking the pipe into two commands works correctly:
&$7z a -r -ttar -bd ${archive}.tmp .
&$7z a -r -txz -bd $archive ${archive}.tmp
The produced archive is perfectly valid.
So, what is wrong with my pipeline?
(I am using Powershell)
Nothing is wrong with your pipeline it is the way that the pipeline works that's causing the error.
PowerShell pipe works in an asynchronous way. Meaning that output of the first command is available to the second command immediately one object at the time even if the first one has not finished executing, See here.
Both Unix and PowerShell pipes operate in the same way. The reason why you might be seeing a difference from Unix to PowerShell is the way in which they go about it is different.
Unix passes Strings between the commands. Where as a Powershell pipe will pass full-fledged .net object between commands. This difference in the data type being past between command will be why it works on unix and not in PowerShell. If 7z.exe can not huddle these .net objects correctly the files will be come corrupt, See here.
Try adding | %{ "$_" } in between the pipes like
&$7z a -r -ttar -bd -so . | %{ "$_" } | &$7z a -r -txz -bd $archive -si
The point is that the second call to 7z expects unmodified data on STDIN, but PowerShell is converting the output from the first call to 7z to (multiple) (string) objects. % is an alias for foreach-object, so what the additional command does is to loop over each object and convert it to a plain string before passing it on to the second call to 7z.
Edit: Reading through PowerShell’s Object Pipeline Corrupts Piped Binary Data it looks to me now as if my suggestion would not work, and there's also no way to fix it. Well, other than wrapping the whole pipeline into a cmd /c "..." call to make cmd and not PowerShell handle the pipeline.
Edit2: I also was trying this solution from the PowerShell Cookbook, but it was very slow.
In the end, I created a .cmd script with the 7z pipes that I'm calling from my PowerShell script.
My powershell script takes the following parameter:
Param($BackedUpFilePath)
The value that is getting passed into my script is:
"\123.123.123.123\Backups\Website.7z"
I have another variable which is the location I want to extract the file:
$WebsiteDeploymentFolder = "C:\example"
I am trying to extract the archive with the following command:
`7z x $BackedUpFilePath -o$WebsiteDeploymentFolder -aoa
I keep getting the following error:
Error:
cannot find archive
The following works but I need $BackedUpFilePath to be dynamic:
`7z x '\123.123.123.123\Backups\Website.7z' -o$WebsiteDeploymentFolder -aoa
I think I need to pass $BackedUpFilePath to 7z with quotes but they seem to get stripped out no matter what I try. I am in quote hell.
Thanks.
EDIT: It turns out the problem was I was passing in "'\123.123.123.123\Backups\Website.7z'". (extra single quotes)
The easiest way to work with external command line applications in PowerShell (in my opinion) is to use aliases. For example, the following works fine for me.
Set-Alias Szip C:\Utilities\7zip\7za.exe
$Archive = 'C:\Temp\New Folder\archive.7z'
$Filename = 'C:\Temp\New Folder\file.txt'
SZip a $Archive $Filename
PowerShell takes care of delimiting the parameters correctly.