I am using a VB to run .bat file and to pass arguments to it.
Right now I managed to run it and to send the arguments to it, but ran into a problem. My arguments might contain spaces inside. I was trying to use quotes, but it didn't seem to work as I expected. So what I am doing:
Running this code: System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("C:\Users\XXXXXXX\Desktop\New.bat", """"+data+"""")
where 'data' is the argument I am sending. For testing it contains the value:
Hel loo
Inside the .bat file I have a code, that opens notepad and writes the argument inside it. With this code I have managed to pass the argument as one with spaces, but the result is:
"Hel loo"
Any ideas how to get rid of the quotes on each side, while still passing the argument as one with spaces?
I cannot escape them or replace with another symbol. This solution needs to pass the argument as one with spaces inside. Is this possible? The program I am working with is not important.
EDIT
This is the content of the .bat file:
set directory_Rexe="C:\Users\XXXXXXX\Desktop\testBat.txt"
set var=%1
echo %var%>%directory_Rexe%
%directory_Rexe%
You have three options here:
Use %~1, which will strip the quotes.
Don't care about putting everything into argument 1 and quoting and use %* instead. You mentioned not wanting that, though.
Don't pass the string as an argument, but as an environment variable instead. This also helps a lot when you have a number of characters in it that need to be escaped.
All options require you to change the batch file, though.
I'd also question the need for a batch file when you have a perfectly capable programming language already at your fingertips. Writing text to a file should actually be easier from VB.
Related
In vue, is there a way to have a value span multiple lines in an .env file. Ex:
Instead of:
someValue=[{"someValue":"Here is a really really long piece which should be split into multiple lines"}]
I want to do something like:
someValue=`[{"someValue":"Here is a really
really long piece which
should be split into multiple lines"}]`
Doing the latter gives me a JSON parsing error if I try to do JSON.parse(someValue) in my code
I don't know if this will work, but I can't format a comment appropriately enough to get the point across so see if this will work:
someValue=[{"someValue":"Here is a really\
really long piece which\
should be split into multiple lines"}]
Where "\" should escape the newline similar to how you can write long bash commands while escaping the newline. I'm not certain the .env interpreter will support it though.
EDIT
Looks like this won't work. This syntax was actually proposed, but I don't think it was incorporated. See motdotla/dotenv#333 (which is what Vue uses to parse .env).
Like #zero298 said, this isn't possible. Likely you could delimit the entry with a character that wouldn't show up normally in the text (^ is a good candidate), then parse it within the application using string.replace('^', '\n');
I am getting a commandline string in my application and I am trying to run the same as an NSTask. I can convert it as a C-String and run it using system.
system([commandlineStr cStringUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]);
But I prefer using NSTask instead. For running as NSTask, I need to split the string as command and an array of arguments. Splitting with space doesn't work since there could be arguments with space in between. Currently they are either escaped or quoted. For eg:
cp "~/File with spaces" ~/Folder\ with\ spaces
Is there a built in way to split the string to multiple arguments or write a custom parsing logic for the same.
The format you are trying to parse is the shell command line, there is a program which is rather good at that - the shell. If you did choose to parse it yourself your job would not be finished - you would still have to locate the program to run. The shell does that by taking the command name, cp in your example, and searching for a matching program using a set of paths. To copy this you would have to perform the same search.
There is a much easier way, the shell it itself a program you can invoke with NSTask, and the shell had an option, -c, which takes a single string as argument and parses and execute that string value as a command line. So you can use NSTask, pass the first argument as #"-c", and the second as the string you have. This will handle everything for you - spaces, escapes, pipes, redirection, et al.
HTH
Context
I am thinking I can solve a problem with the proper creation of a *.bat file.
I am automating a process in a backup program called Acronis Backup and Recovery.
I am able to make a script (jScript) that creates all the syntax except for one part correctly.
In a normal command prompt the command I would run looks like this
acrocmd backup file --include="C:\documents\Gale_thesis.doc" "D:\Sandbox\!oDC!-IMG_0222.MOV" "C:\temp\magnifyReader" --loc="D:\backups" --arc="Backup1a"
The jScript I am creating can generate this with no problem and save as a *.bat file. This can works perfect if my file names are clean. By clean I mean no characters the batch files think are key words and commands.
Anytime I have a word like “copy” or a character like “!” in a file name it fails.
Question
So I am now wondering if loading variables from a text file would do the trick?
I am sure a lot of readers know that when load multiple file/folder paths at the command line you need to surround them with double quotes.
So I need this variable to have the correct syntax to be parsed by the batch file and work like the example when I type it directly at a command prompt.
I had tried to follow info about using for /f etc.
But the examples are not broad enough for me to understand, nobody seems to explain how to use these variables mixed in with other syntax.
I know a little about working with variable in a *.bat file. My jScript application can produce the text in any format a list, escaped, what ever is needed.
Thanks
I might suggest you to take a look at escaping characters
http://www.robvanderwoude.com/escapechars.php
in for loops !var! is used when delayedexpansion is enabled so you might need to escape it
I used the following code provided by Aacini to test the arguments that are being passed
#echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set argCount=0
for %%x in (%*) do (
set /A argCount+=1
set "argVec[!argCount!]=%%~x"
)
echo Number of processed arguments: %argCount%
and since delayedexpansion is enabled I had to escape ! character
arg.bat --include="C:\documents\Gale_thesis.doc" "D:\Sandbox\^^^!oDC^^^!-IMG_0222.MOV" "C:\temp\magnifyReader" --loc="D:\backups" --arc="Backup1a"
Also about the triple escape quotes ^^^
the problem here is that we need to pass two special characters,
1st is the up arrow ^ and 2nd is the exclamation mark !
so the 2nd batch file (the one that reads our arguments) should get ^!
to escape ^ we use ^^ and to escape ! we use ^!
Thanks to Aacini for his code in HERE
When I do the 'ls' command in the terminal on my Raspberry Pi 2, I see different types of names of files, some like "#example.cpp#", as well as others like "homework1.cpp~".
What do these two file types mean, and how can I get rid of them? Simply using the 'rm' command doesn't seem to be working for me. Thanks!
Some applications will create a copy of a file and use special characters when creating the filename for the copy. For instance some text editors will make a copy of a file you are starting to edit by using the same name and adding a tilde character (~) to the end of the file. That way you will have a backup of the file that you are about to edit.
Another reason would be if an application is processing the file into a temporary file with the temporary file then being used for the next step. For example perhaps the C/C++ compiler is reading the file homework1.cpp with the C Preprocessor to generate the temporary file #homework1.cpp# which is then compiled by the compiler to generate the object code file.
I am not familiar with raspberry pi so am not sure as to what may be creating the filenames with the pound sign (#) on the front and back. Perhaps it is the C++ compiler. I am pretty sure the files with the tilde character on appended to the end of the file name is a back file from vi or vim containing a copy of the file at the time it was last opened with the text editor.
One thing that you could do is to look in those files to see what is there using a Linux command or a text editor. If you use a text editor I would copy the file to another folder as a back up and then look at it there.
Edit: Someone just posted and then deleted an answer which also mentioned about how to remove these files.
What I read was that the rm command is used however for some kinds of special characters you will need to use quotes around the name and you may also need to use an escape to escape certain special characters.
The command shell reads the command line you type in and makes changes to the text before passing it on to the command you type in. So if the filename has a space in it, say jj Johny then when you remove the file you have to specify rm "jj Johny" since spaces are used by the command processor to separate out arguments.
The other poster mentioned that you had to escape out the pound sign (#) using the back slash character in order to prevent it from being modified by the command processor.
I have a big string, precisely - an XSLT code - that I would like to hardcode in my VB.net program. I tried with putting " before every quotation mark, but it still didn't work out, and it's pretty mocking to place it 100 times. Using Chr(34) is also not the best solution.
Is there some way, like to put # (or another character) before the string itself that will define and work for all the characters in the string that need to be escaped ?
If it is a large string. Why not save it to file and then read the file into memory before you want to use it. That way you don't have to do any escaping and it will be easy to modify if you decide to change it.