Pass clipboard to batch in Windows XP - command-line

Using Windows XP I want to copy text (URL) to the clipboard and then run a batch file that will use that URL.
I know the reverse is possible with the clip.exe floating around.

I use my own CLIPTEXT program. It is a very simple 5-lines pascal, here is the source code. I am sure that you can get the idea and translate it to any other language.
program cliptext;
uses clipbrd;
begin
writeln(clipboard.asText);
end.
then, in your batch files, you may use to start the copied URLs.
for /f "tokens=*" %%c in ('cliptext') do start "" "%%c"

Related

How to upload a lot of files at once using FileZilla (possibly using a file containing the list of files to publish)?

Is there a way, using FileZilla, to publish many files at once (currently I have to choose them one by one every time, because they can be in different directories and I can't publish the whole directory)?
The ideal solution I am looking for is to use a single .txt file where I can paste the list of paths I want to publish and then somehow tell FileZilla to use it and publish each file to the remote server.
FileZilla lets you export the list of the files you have published with File -> Export in XML format. I am looking for something like this but I need to do the opposite operation.
If someone has some insights on it, please share them with me. Thanks!
P.S.: currently, I also use NetBeans IDE and publish files with it by clicking with the right button of the mouse and selecting Upload. If there's a way to do the same with NetBeans, that would be great (I write PHP code).
Thanks for the attention.
FileZilla does not allow any kind of automation.
See How do I send a file with FileZilla from the command line?
But you can use any other command-line FTP client.
For example WinSCP FTP client has Uploading a list of files example that exactly covers your task:
You may use following batch file that calls WinSCP script:
#echo off
set SESSION=ftp://user:password#example.com/
set REMOTE_PATH=/home/user/
echo open %SESSION% >> script.tmp
rem Generate "put" command for each line in list file
for /F %%i in (list.txt) do echo put "%%i" "%REMOTE_PATH%" >> script.tmp
echo exit >> script.tmp
winscp.com /script=script.tmp
set RESULT=%ERRORLEVEL%
del script.tmp
rem Propagating WinSCP exit code
exit /b %RESULT%

MS-DOS commands doesn't work (COPY and ERASE)

I have done this .bat file to copy some maps and textures from my USB drive to the valve installation path, but it doesn't work, why?
#echo on
COPY \CS-Fix\Maps\*.* %PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\maps
COPY \CS-Fix\Textures\*.* %PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\
ERASE %PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\maps\de_shipment.bsp
pause
What is wrong?
The %PROGRAMFILES% indicates that you're using Windows, not MS-DOS.
MS-DOS was Microsoft's variant of DOS, an operating system that preceded Windows.
Anyway, two main problems are apparent to my tired eyes:
Paths that possibly have spaces and are not quoted.
Probably no write access to the relevant folders.
To fix the first problem, quote paths.
The second problem is only a problem in Windows Vista and later.
You can probably fix that by running the batch file from an elevated command prompt.
I assume that the batch file is sitting on and being run from your thumb drive.
Do the paths need to be quoted?
#echo on
COPY "\CS-Fix\Maps\*.*" "%PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\maps"
COPY "\CS-Fix\Textures\*.*" "%PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\"
ERASE "%PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\maps\de_shipment.bsp"
pause
You might need to quote things. %PROGRAMFILES% probably expands out to C:\Program Files. Try something like this:
#echo on
COPY "\CS-Fix\Maps\*.*" "%PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\maps"
COPY "\CS-Fix\Textures\*.*" "%PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\"
ERASE "%PROGRAMFILES%\Valve\Half-Life\cstrike\maps\de_shipment.bsp"
pause

Best automation scripting for command line commands in Windows?

I need to make a script that automates the following:
Read comma or tab separated values from the input file
Construct a command from them and run it
Get the command output, looks for substrings in it and update the log file based on the existence of a substring
I do this in Windows Server 2008, so I can do this in CMD or PowerShell but I am not sure they provide such possibilities. I can try Perl or C#, but I want to try a minimalistic approach first.
Minimalistic as far as coding - Perl
Minimalistic as far as installing new software - PowerShell (IIRS W.S.2008 included that?)
So many answers, and none providing a solution that would meet the requirements...
You didn't say what are the conditions to be checked against each CSV row, and what the CSV would be like, and what the log would be like - so I made it all up... Here's an example in BATCH:
#echo off
set csvfile=input.csv
set logfile=output.log
for /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=," %%a in (%csvfile%) do call :processline "%%a" "%%b" "%%c"
exit /B 0
:processline
set param=%~3
set check=%param:um=%
rem if they are not equal - substring 'um' exists in it.
if not "$%check%" == "$%param%" (
rem this passes all params to output.
rem I'm not calling echo directly here, because there might be symbols, that will confuse CMD at the end of the %*.
call :output %*>> %logfile%
)
exit /B 0
:output
set colA=%~1
set colB=%~2
set colC=%~3
rem output to log
echo [%DATE% %TIME%] (%colB%) %colA% %colC%.
exit /B 0
Here's the example input file that I tested it with:
foo,1,dum
bar,3,dim
baz,15,dirum
And here's the resulting log messages:
[2009-10-14 14:57:35.87] (1) foo dum.
[2009-10-14 14:57:35.89] (15) baz dirum.
I hope this shows clearly, that BATCH is not nasty nor it is hard to use. :P
If you have further question about BATCH - don't be shy, post them all on SO. ;)
I would recommend going with Python (or Perl if you swing that way). These are very minimal tools to have to install on a machine and add all the functionality you need.
The string handling you describe is unpleasant in any shell (Bash included) unless you are using sed or awk... and that just gets esoteric. In the end you'll retain more hair if you go straight to a scripting language first.
Perl was called into existence to quickly solve these kind
of tasks. It should not take more 20 lines for this
particular problem.
It is also really easy to install:
Download ActivePerl (17.7 MB, Perl 5.10.)
Run the installer.

How can I write to the parallel port from the Windows Command line?

How can I write to parallel port through Windows XP command line?
Looking at your reply to Zoredache, your real problem is not output to the parallel port, that's trivial.
Your real problem is how to get a 0xff character on stdout. This is possible with a trivial .com executable which invokes the relevant soft interrupt, but to be honest it's probably easier to create a file with that single 0xff character in it and then just copy that to the printer:
> copy /b data.bin lpt1
Note the /b flag which tells copy that the file is a binary file.
Back in the DOS days we would frequently use a command like type filename.txt > lpt1 to print our text files.

windows cmd pipe not unicode even with /U switch

I have a little c# console program that outputs some text using Console.WriteLine. I then pipe this output into a textfile like:
c:myprogram > textfile.txt
However, the file is always an ansi text file, even when I start cmd with the /u switch.
cmd /? says about the /u switch:
/U Causes the output of internal
commands to a pipe or file to be Unicode
And it indeed makes a difference, when I do an
c:echo "foo" > text.txt
the text.txt is unicode (without BOM)
I wonder why piping the output of my console program into a new file does not create an unicode file likewise and how i could change that?
I just use Windows Power Shell (which produces a unicode file with correct BOM), but I'd still like to know how to do it with cmd.
Thanks!
The /U switch, as the documentation says, affects whether internal commands generate Unicode output. Your program is not one of cmd.exe's internal commands, so the /U option does not affect it.
To create a Unicode text file, you need to make sure your program is generating Unicode text.
Even that may not be enough, though. I came across this blog from Junfeng Zhang describing how to write Unicode text in a console program. It checks the file type of the standard output handle. For character files (a console or LPT port), it calls WriteFileW. For all other types of handles (including disk files and pipes), it converts the output string to the console's current code page. I'm afraid I don't know how that translates into .Net terms, though.
I had a look how mscorlib implements Console.WriteLine, and it seems to decide on which text output encoding to use based on a call to GetConsoleOutPutCP. So I'm guessing (but have not yet confimed) that the codepage returned is a differnt one for a PS console than for a cmd console so that my program indeed only outputs ansi when running from cmd.