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!
Related
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.
I have problems controlling character code pages in a Windows cmd window, or rather in DOS scripts (.bat files) I use for certain tasks on my Windows 7 office computer.
Here is the problem:
One of my scripts is used to open certain files in their respective programmes, e.g.
C:\Stuff\Büroeinrichtung\MyFile.xlsx
The crucial thing here is the u-umlaut (ü) in the directory name.
In my script I use
Start "" "C:\Stuff\Büroeinrichtung\MyFile.xlsx"
to start Excel and open the file.
This works as long as I tell my text editor (Notepad++) to encode the script using codepage 850 (Western European), as this is what the cmd windows on my machine use by default.
However, I want to be able to use scripts that are encoded in something else, primarily UTF-8 or UTF-8-BOM. From answers to another question posted here I learned that principally I can set a command in the script for the cmd window to change the codepage, e.g. chcp 65001 for UTF-8. So my script would then look like
chcp 65001
pause :: this is here just to have some visual control while testing
Start "" "C:\Stuff\Büroeinrichtung\MyFile.xlsx"
pause :: dito
But: whatever I do, I do not get this running. The cmd window nicely accepts the change to the codepage, then stops due to pause (in Line 2), but on hitting "enter" to continue I
either get an alert that something is wrong with the ü (other, fancy, characters displayed), or
I get an alert that a directory of that name wasn't found (again obviously something wrong with the ü the actual bits of which seem to respresent something else) or
the cmd window just disappears (apparently crashed, and apparently never reaching Line 4 where a new pause would halt it).
I tried all possible combinations of codepages called in the script and various encodings for the script file (.bat) itself but did not get anywhere.
So, to put the long story short: What do I have to do, in a script encoded in UTF-8 (or so) and going to be run on a machine using codepage 850 by default that a character ü (u-umlaut) in a directory name is to be understood in the script as exactly ü, nothing else?
I've had this small problem for quite some time now and I haven't been able to find a solution even after excessive googling.
In this guide it is described how LaTeX can be written and compiled using npp++ and nppExec together with SumatraPDF.
Through some clever scripts and the use of DDE commands (through CMCDDE.exe), it is even possible to use sumatra's ForwardSearch to jump back and forth from the .tex to the .pdf. Everything works great, unless the path to the .tex file contains a character that's not in the English alphabet (for example åäö).
The CMCDDE command then fails because the path sent to sumatra's ForwardSearch reads (for example) C:\†„” instead of C:\åäö. This has to be an encoding issue and I haven't been able to find a working solution.
So, if I have this .tex file C:\åäö\MWE.tex with
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello World!
\end{document}
it won't open correctly when using the batch script described in the link above. These are the problematic batch file lines:
::Writes the commands that are to be executed using CMCDDE.exe (through cmcdde.tmp)
echo SUMATRA>"%~dp1build\cmcdde.tmp"
::%~dp1build transforms into C:\åäö\build for the MWE
echo control>>"%~dp1build\cmcdde.tmp"
echo [ForwardSearch("%~dp1build\%~n1.pdf", "%~f1", %2, 0, 0, 0)]>>"%~dp1build\cmcdde.tmp"
:: This gives the following line in cmcdde.tmp: [ForwardSearch("P:\Documents\†„”\build\MWE.pdf", "P:\Documents\†„”\MWE.tex", 3, 0, 0, 0)] (in ANSI encoding)
"P:\Documents\localtexmf\cmcdde.exe" #"%~dp1build\cmcdde.txt"
:: This fails because the path P:\Documents\†„”\build doesn't exist (P:\Documents\åäö\build does)
Ideas I've had and tried:
I tried changing the encoding by using chcp 65001 and chcp 865 but
haven't been able to get it to work.
I have also tried using a
search and replace
script to go through the cmcdde.tmp file before executing it but it didn't
succeed (I'm not sure which signs I should search for to exchange for
åäö, †„” or åäö or ├Ñ├ñ├ or other?)
I have also tried putting
cmd /c or cmd /a /c before the echo commands (as sort of described
here)
but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Please let me know if something which parts of the question that are unclear.
I managed to find a solution. Turns out using the code page 1252 solves the problem.
So putting chcp 1252 at the beginning of the batch file is the solution. However, if you're using other none standard characters than me (other then the ones in the nordic alphabet), I'm guessing you might need another code page.
Experiment and test different ones until you get it working.
Hi everybody i would like to ask how i can remove a mistakenly added second file extension using a batch script.
E.g. "test.aac.m4a" -> "test.m4a"
So the last extension is the right one which i want to have.
But this is ONLY the case for
.aac.m4a
-> .m4a
and
.m4a.aac
-> .aac
I know some batch scripting but
ren *.aac.m4a *.m4a
Won't work :(
Another thing worth mentioning would be that these double extensions come from my music software MusicBee.
I use mp4box on m4a files to extract the raw aac stream from the m4a container so i can edit it in other software.
Currently the syntax is:
mp4box.exe -raw 1 "<URL>" -out "<URL>".aac
The "<URL>" is the variable MusicBee will replace with the file url.
But this will add the .aac extension after the .m4a and i have no idea how to replace it instead. (and again when i repack the files ".aac -> .aac.m4a")
As far as i know MusicBee just replaces the variables and launches the batch code when activated so i think other batch code will work too.
Is it possible to prevent this double extension from even developing?
As always ANY help is apreciated!!
Thanks, Daniel
In preventing the double extension from developing I'm guessing you're not appending the file extension accordingly in the right way, I am however not familiar at all with Music Bee.
As for creating the right batch files that do what you want, I've used Advanced File Renamer in the past for all sorts of renaming patterns such as your case. It's freeware too! The program has a fairly advanced feature that allows users to write custom scripts in JavaScript user guide here. And can even generate batch scripts that do special renaming (as you've noted in the comments) for your specific use case.
For the other less advanced users the program has a GUI that makes it easy to do batch renames.
Best of all, if you're like me that avoids third party software installs just to do one thing as much as possible, the program has a portable mode that won't hook itself into your system, which is always good.
Read the manuals and guides there for more information. My answer might sound a little too much like advertising for it, but that's only because it's helped me so much in renaming my music a long time ago.
Here's a screenshot by the OP, RapidFireArts that shows how OP used the software to remove the second file extension.
It ought to be possible, but I have no idea how to work with your software to prevent the double extensions from occurring in the first place. But it is fairly easy to strip off the unwanted middle "extension".
If you know for a fact that none of your .m4a or .aac files are supposed to have multiple dots, then you could simply do the following:
ren *.m4a ???????????????????????????????????????????.m4a
ren *.aac ???????????????????????????????????????????.aac
Just make sure you have enough ? wildcards to match the longest name in your folder. See How does the Windows RENAME command interpret wildcards? for an explanation of why this solution works.
But sometimes file names legitimately have additional dots prior to the actual extension. If this is your case, then the following batch script will remove only the unwanted .m4a and .aac middle "extensions"
#echo off
for /f "eol=: delims=" %%A in ('dir /b /a-d *.m4a.aac *.aac.m4a') do (
for %%B in ("%%A") do ren "%%A" "%%~nB%%~xA"
)
Another option is to use my JREN.BAT regular expression file renaming utility. JREN.BAT is a hybrid JScript/batch script that runs natively on any Windows machine from XP onward. Ideally, the script should be placed within a folder that is included within your PATH. I like to use c:\utils for all of my non-standard utilities.
Once you have JREN.BAT, then all you would need would be
call jren "\.(m4a|aac)(?=\.(m4a|aac)$)" ""
Provided you understand regular expressions, and you take the time to read the built-in JREN help, then there are many wondrous things you can do with the utility. The help is accessed by issuing jren /? from the command line. You might want to use jren /?|more if you have not configured your console window to have a large buffer that enables scrolling to see prior output.
I use File Renamer Basic.
http://download.cnet.com/File-Renamer-Basic/3000-2248_4-10306538.html
It's Free
I am writing a batch script to go through some directories doing an specific task, something like the following:
set DBCreationScript=//Here I set the full path for the script
echo %DBCreationScript%
Problem is the path has got some latin characters (ç, ã, á) and when I run the script, the output shows strange characters, not the ones I typed in. The batch script is in ANSI encoding.
I already tried to set the script encoding to UTF-8, but apparently the batch interpreter can't handle the control characters that appear on the beggining of the file.
Any thoughts?
Save the batch file in OEM encoding (a decent editor should allow this) or change the code page prior to running it with
chcp 1252
You can also save it as UTF-8 without signature (BOM) and use
chcp 65001
but down that path lies peril and dragons await to eat you (in short: It's usually painful and has a few weird side-effects).