http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:56:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Most well-written scripts and programs offer the user some assistance with providing command-line variables/options. Do this in your scripts and you'll have thankful users, especially if your script gets used by people other than close friends and co-workers. I've used many methods over the years of checking for, ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=23 As much as I like batch, it cannot do the simple task of converting a number from decimal to any other format. In my job, I need to convert to hex fairly often. Rather than opening up calc and using it's clunky format, I found a bit of vbs code ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=22 Have you ever noticed that when you double-click an Excel file, and if Excel was already open, the file you clicked opens in the already running instance? How do you replicate that on the command line? Running "Excel.exe MyFile.xls" opens another instance. Running "Start MyFile.xls" opens another ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=21 Creating menus in batch usually means lots of echo statements to print out the menu, cluttering up what may have been a clean, easy to read script. Using 'For /F', you can create a dynamic menu with just a few lines. All you need is a separate file ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=20 'For /F' is my favorite DOS command of all time. Its uses are endless. At it's core, the /F switch doesn't sound like much. It reads a file, one line at a time, and assigns the first "token" to a variable. The thing that makes it ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=19 Search the internet and you'll find a lot of talk about how to take a large list of values and remove the duplicates.  Unfortunately, I haven't found any good solutions using batch.  I took some time to think about this the other day because I needed the functionality in a ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=18 Random numbers can be generated in several ways.  Depending on what you're using them for, each way has its benefits.  This post will talk about the %RANDOM% variable and using the system clock to generate psuedo-random numbers on the command line. Using the %RANDOM% variable is good if you're making a ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=17 For /L is used for counting. Need to execute a command X number of times, or have a variable number of cases that each need to be dealt with separately? For /L is your pony. The simplest example of a For /L statement is just to count and echo the number. C:\>for ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=16 This post is fairly short because to tell you the truth, I've never used for /r. The functionality offered by this switch can be duplicated with /f if done correctly. That said, why don't you jump in and explore it with me. As I write this post, I'm thinking about ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=15 Have an older Samsung Camcorder that you want to use its Motion Capture software on your new Windows Vista PC?  You guessed it, the driver installation doesn't work.  To get my SCL770 to work, I did the following: Insert the CD that came with the camcorder Cancel the setup program that wants ... http://scripting.sovereignmagic.com/?p=14