i have a perl script that is used in updating my awstats logs of my website. The script works fine if i just paste it in cmd (Windows) but the moment i paste it in a batch file, it messes up the format of the files generated (they should be prepended with current date/time). The code is:
perl C:\PROGRA~2\AWStats\tools\awstats_buildstaticpages.pl -config=mywebsite -update -awstatsprog=C:\PROGRA~2\AWStats\wwwroot\cgi-bin\awstats.pl -dir=C:\myfolder\stats\reports -builddate=%YYYY%MM -buildpdf=C:\PROGRA~2\HTMLDOC\ghtmldoc.exe -staticlinksext=asp`
The resulting files generated is mysite.201008.asp if i paste it in cmd and execute BUT In a batch file with the same script, my resulting file is mysite.MM.asp.
Any idea why this is happening?
The problem is caused by %YYYY%MM.
"%" is a special symbol in batch files. You need to escape it by doubling it: %%YYYY%%MM.
It appears you have to escape the '%' characters.
The command shell doing variable substitution on %YYYY% which I'm guessing is not defined in your environment, so it substitutes the empty string for that "variable".
Unfortunately, there are no opaque quotes in the Windows shell.
Related
Using AHK script to open up and launch text files (or script files) within notepad++. I recently had to add spaces to my file path which has caused the problems I now experience. It's as if the space in the file path is escaping the command.
e.g.
Run % "notepad++.exe C:\C Docs\SW\AHK\Desktop1.ahk"
Upon running the above line, it will ask in msgbox: "C:\C" doesn't exist. Create it?
This script happens to be the script location itself. So I also tried the following without success (produces same message):
Run % "notepad++.exe " . a_scriptdir . "\" . A_ScriptName
You are passing two arguments to Notepad++ the first one being C:\C and the second one being Docs\SW\AHK\Desktop1.ahk.
To pass them as one argument, do what you'd always do with command line arguments, quote them.
Run, % "notepad++.exe ""C:\C Docs\SW\AHK\Desktop1.ahk"""
Try like this:
Run notepad++.exe "C:\C Docs\SW\AHK\Desktop1.ahk"
I have Cygwin installed in order to use Linux command line tools on Windows. I also added it to my PATH. In general, it works fine, but I observe this weird behavior:
I want to run sha256sum on the file C:\Users\s1504gl\Desktop\Täst .txt. Note the german Umlaut ä and the whitespace before the file extension. In order to avoid problems with paths, I always quote paths in command line calls, such as:
sha256sum "C:\Users\s1504gl\Desktop\Täst .txt"
However, PowerShell returns
/usr/bin/sha256sum: '"C:\Users\s1504gl\Desktop\T'$'\303\244''st .txt"': No such file or directory
When I rename the file to either Täst.txt or Test .txt, it works. So the combination of the special character ä and the whitespace seems to cause the problem. Exchanging double quotes by single quotes does not change anything in this case.
I am pretty sure it has to to with PowerShell since the example works without any problems on my Linux machine.
Is there some other way of escaping special characters and/or blanks that I do not know?
Run from Cygwin terminal
sha256sum "/cygdrive/C/Users/s1504gl/Desktop/Täst\ .txt"
In general Cygwin program do not accept Windows paths and works surely with POSIX path
I found the following workaround:
I create a temporary file from R, containing all the necessary commands and then run this tempfile using bash which is also included in Cygwin. This way, I escape from the problem occurring due to different encodings in Windows and the Linux tools from Cygwin.
Ultimately, I want to be able to call my PS script from VBA (Excel), but the easiest way to do that seems to be with system batch commands - so I'm testing my script with a BAT file.
The script returns a text file with the contents of a webpage, sans HTML tags. It works fine called alone with default parameters; it worked fine with no spaces in the output path parameter, but I've had no luck using a path that includes a space.
PS1 script, boiled down:
param ( [string]$outputPathName="" )
$outputPathName | Out-File "D:\Documents\Google Drive\out.txt"
BAT file to test it:
powershell.exe '"D:\Documents\Google Drive\GetWebPage.ps1"' -outputPathName '"D:\Documents\Google Drive\out.txt"'
I get the error message "Unexpected token '-outputPathName' in expression or statement." (I also get a similar error for the argument, but if the parameter name were recognized I might be able to get past this.)
How can I pass a named argument in from BAT script file to PS1 script file (with spaces in the path and argument)?
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 {*}$cmd
Note that if you need to supply the full path to the command to be executed, it often needs to be quoted also due to spaces in the pathname:
set cmd "\"C:\\Program Files\\mystuff\\my stuff.exe\" "
I am doing a batch scripting assignment where I have to call one script from inside another. I need the script to run the second script no matter where my lecturer saves these scripts. How would I do this. Is there some way to find the path of script inside the script and use that to execute the file. Any help would be great. I think I need to use %'s but i'm not sure.
The name of the script is Hello World.bat.
How would I copy Hello World.bat to the C:\ if I don't know which directory the lecturer has placed it in. what command/s would I use so that the copy would work regardless of the scripts location.
I don't see the "DOS" tag, but I'll assume that it is for now. If you want the entire path, you can get it by doing this:
echo %cd%
If you want just the last folder, this works (inside a .bat file):
for %%* in (.) do #echo %%~n*
Note that from the command line, the above command will work with single %'s:
for %* in (.) do #echo %~n*
If the script you are executing is calling other scripts in the SAME folder location, you can prefix the path statement with "%~dp0" or "%~dps0" but do not put a backslash between that and the name of the script you are calling. In other words, if script1.bat is calling script2.bat in the same folder, the statement in script1.bat would refer to "%~dp0script2.bat"
sorry about batch files, am not familiar, but in nix shell, there is the locate command which can return the path of the file , if you know the filename exactly and the name is unique.
like
name=$(locate filname)