Using a .bat file for integration to client - batch-file

I was trying to put together a .bat file program that presents readable information. Basically, we have a application called vSphere that reads custom scripts directly from a xml file. So there are xml elements that are passed into the the client. Now, I have a similar situation where we are doing the same thing with vCloud. The difference is that vCloud only reads data from a .bat file instead of a xml file.. If I wanted to do such a thing what would that look like.. Below is my psuedo code as I'm not completely familiar with .bat file syntax. Is this how I can present the information to be read by the vCloud client? The client already knows how to read the .bat file, I just need help with a control structure example of a .bat file to tackle this problem.
xml version:
<_type>viss.CustomizationExample</_type>
<changeExample>1341932956</changeExample>
.bat file version:
#echo off
SET ChangeExample=1341932956
if changeExample==""(
echo changeExample==ChangeExample
)
Thank you!

this code may work for you
#echo off
set changeExample=1341932956
echo %changeExample%
This will display the value of changeExample 1341932956 on the cmd screen if you run the batch file is this what you wanted...

Your almost there, just a couple of things.
To access a variable after setting it, without any special circumstances, you need to put %'s at each side of it to tell cmd that you want the value contained in it.
By default if is case sensitive, so you must first make sure that your variables are spelt
correctly, also you need a space between the end of the if condition and the bracket.
Provided that this is the correct format for the batch (I don't have a clue what it actually wants to read) then this is the correct syntax
#echo off
SET ChangeExample=1341932956
if %ChangeExample%=="" (
echo changeExample==%ChangeExample%
)
I presumed you wanted to echo the variable contents rather than the string ChangeExample, if you just want the string remove the %'s.

Related

Batch File Calls VB Script & Passes Filename as String Only

I have a batch file that calls a VB Script file. This VB Script comes from MS Office Suite and is located in the Installed Folder. My file calls the VB Script and pipes it to a file using the > symbol. This works if your redirect is a string. I was wondering how to redirect to a file using a variable.
I'm only including a small fraction of the code showing how I want it to work.
This, as written, works. However I want my batch file to use a variable instead of the text in quotes. In fact, my batch file creates the path depending on where the batch file is located.
::Create file and display on screen
Echo Writing Information to File: "OfficeStatus.txt"
Call cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus > OfficeStatus.txt
Echo.
When written as shown below, it does not work:
::Create file and display on screen
Echo Writing Information to File: "OfficeStatus.txt"
Call cscript ospp.vbs /dstatus > %_sLogFile%
Echo.
I don't know if the issue is because of the redirect not able to handle a variable or not. An example of what might be in the variable:
_sLogFile=E:\UserName\Documents\Status\OfficeStatus.txt.
Any thoughts would be great.
The variable, by the way, correctly contains the path and filename... so that's not the issue.
it does not work means did not do what I expected and unfortunately does not tell us what it did do.
Did it crash the system? Create an error message (If so, what message)? Create an output file in an unexpected place??
Personally, I'd suspect what you have concealed as username. Without knowing precisely what that text is, we start guessing, which isn't a logical approach. It doesn't have to be the real username, substitute Fred Bloggs for the real name to mask it if necessary.
I believe that username may either be %username% to retrieve the name from the system, or a real literal. The problem with this is that such names often contain spaces, you'd need to "Enclose the full filename in quotes".
See - had you told us _sLogFile=E:\Fred Bloggs\Documents\Status\OfficeStatus.txt it would all have been a lot clearer - presuming that my guess as to the cause of the problem is correct.
Perhaps you should look for files named like E:\Fred which is where the expected output may have ended up.

read from a .txt file in BATCH, without using literal path

Basically, i would like to use the type command, but I can't provide the actual path.
Currently my attempt was
type "./TESTS/Test1.txt"
but I'm assuming that since it's a relative path, it can't work.
I've run into the same issue with copy and xcopy.
I have been unable to solve this issue or find anything online.
Is there way to do this?
EDIT:
To clarify, I am trying to get my .bat file, to read the contents of a .txt file located in a subfolder (meaning the subfolder and the .bat file are in the same folder), and print it to the console.
Since you've now edited your question but seemingly not provided feedback on my earlier comment, here it is as an answer.
Windows and it's command interpreter, cmd.exe uses the backslash \ as its path separator.
Although many commands seem to accept the forward slash interchangeably, Type isn't one of those.
Additionally .\ is relative only to the current working directory, and in cmd.exe is unnecessary, though valid.
The following should therefore work as you intended:
Type TESTS\Test1.txt
Type "TESTS\Test1.txt"
Type .\TESTS\Test1.txt
Type ".\TESTS\Test1.txt"
If the location you are using is being received in the batch file with the forward slashes, you could set it to a variable, then expand that variable substituting the forward slashes for backward slashes:
Set "Variable=./TESTS/Test1.txt"
Type "%Variable:/=\%"
It may be necessary, depending upon the code we cannot see, to navigate to the batch file directory first, since it may not necessarily be the current working directory at the time of the invokation of those commands.
To do that use:
CD /D "%~dp0"
%~dp0 provides the folder, where your batchfile resides (including the last \) (does of course only work inside a batch file). So:
type "%~dp0Test\test1.txt"
is exactly what you want: <folder_where_my_batchfile_is\><subfolder_Test>\<File_test1.txt>
independent of your "working folder" (where the batchfile might have cd or pushd to).
Wouldn't it basically work by using %CD%? Like, TYPE "%CD%/Subfolder/Test1.txt"? %CD% is the windows variable for "Current Directory" and should be set to whatever directory the batch file is working in and since you're trying to access a folder within the same directory this should work. You're question is quite unclear, however, and I hope I'm not misinterpreting.

Batch File Command throwing error in loop

Here is the situation. I need to "type" a .sj files content, then save it as an .js file. This is not the same as a rename, as the encoding is different. I am very new to Batch File syntax, but proficient with other programming languages. Here is what I have tried:
call for %%i in (.\*.js) do type %%i > %%i.js
But this is giving me the "%%i is unexpected at this time" Error.
If you need me to provide more insight, I will be happy to.
BACKGROUND: Trying to use JSDoc3 on .sj files but the encoding is not compatible. Using an encoder did not work either. What did work is copying and pasting the contents into a new file with encoding UTF8. But like I stated, a program like UTFCast did not work.
Two percent signs without anything in between (in a batch file) are treated like a single percent sign in a command (not a batch file).
Moreover CALL command enables a user to execute a batch file from within another batch file.
So from cmd you need to run only below..
for %i in (.\*.js) do type %i > %i.js
if you want to learn more...
for command
call command

"start" command in .bat batch file

I have an extremely simply batch file, which has previously worked for me but no longer will.
start /wait steamcmd +login anonymous +force_install_dir C:\Games\CSGOServer\TEST
pause
For some reason I get the following error upon running the file:
http://imgur.com/Xd8di1Y (sorry, not enough rep to enbed with html)
Any ideas why start will not work given that it is clearly an accepted command? I did notice the strange characters in front of this but cannot really tell where these would come from.
Thanks in advance.
Damon
Looks like someone saved that batch file in UTF-8 format. Open the file with Notepad and click File → Save As.... Change the field Encoding to "ANSI" and click Save. Confirm that you want to replace the file.

Running BAT/CMD file with accented characters in it

I have a Windows batch file which has an instruction to execute an EXE file in a location whose path contains accented characters. Following are the contents of the batch file.
#echo off
C:\español\jre\bin\java.exe -version
C:\español\jre\bin\java.exe - This path exists and is proper. I can run this command directly on cmd.exe. But when I run the command from a bat/cmd file it fails saying "The system cannot find the path specified"
One way to fix this is by setting code page to 1252 (that works for me). But I'm afraid we'd have to set code pages for any non-English locale and figuring out which code page to use is pretty difficult.
Is there an alternative approach to fix this problem? Maybe a command-line option or something else?
Another way of doing this, in Windows, is by using wordpad.exe:
Run wordpad.exe
Write your script as you usually do, with accents
Choose Save as > Other formats
Choose to save it as Text document MS-DOS (*.txt)
Change the file extension from .txt to .bat
I had the same problem, and this answer solved it. Basically you have to wrap your script with a bunch of commands to change your terminal codepage, and then to restore it.
#echo off
for /f "tokens=2 delims=:." %%x in ('chcp') do set cp=%%x
chcp 1252>nul
:: your stuff here ::
chcp %cp%>nul
Worked like a charm!
I'm using Notepad++ and it has an option to change "character sets", OEM-US did the trick. ;)
Since you have #echo off you can't see what your batch is sending to the command prompt. Reproducing your problem with that off it seems like the ñ character gets misinterpreted since the output I see is:
C:\espa±ol\jre\bin\java -version
The system cannot find the path specified.
I was able to get it to work by echoing the command into the batch file from the command prompt, i.e.
echo C:\español\jre\bin\java.exe -version>>test.bat
This seems to translate the character into whatever the command prompt is looking for, though I've only tested it with English locale set so I don't know if it'll work in all situations for you. Also, if you open the batch in a text editor like notepad it looks wrong (C:\espa¤ol\jre\bin\java.exe)
Use Alt + 0164 for ¤ instead of Alt + 164 ñ in a batch file... It will look odd, but your script should run.
You can use Visual Studio Code and it will let you select the encoding you want to use. Lower right corner, you select the encoding and will display option "save with encoding". Select DOS and will save the accented chars.
I also had the same problem. I was trying to create a simple XCOPY batch file to copy a spreadsheet from one folder to another. Its name had the "é" character in it, and it refused to copy.
Even trying to use Katalin's and Metalcoder's suggestions didn't work on my neolithic Windows XP machine. Then I suddenly thought: Why not keep things as simple as possible (as I am myself extremely simple-minded when it comes to computers) and just substitute, in the batch file code, "é" with the wildcard character "?".
And guess what? It worked!

Resources