I need to create a VBA Macro in Excel.
The task is that when a button is clicked a command will be executed in cmd.
The command to be executed is rfrompcb and it takes the path of a file as argument so there is the first level string which wraps the path up as it contains spaces. As this command is to be executed in cmd there is the second level string, which is the argument for cmd command, i.e. cmd /c "rfrompcb ""file_path""" (I hope I have got this one right). Then since it is to be called by Shell in VBA there is the third level string which wraps the cmd command and serves as the argument for Shell.
My question is: How many double quotation marks should there be? I am quite confused about what the final command line string would look like. Can anyone show me how to construct such string? Or is there another way to do it which involves less string nesting?
Thanks.
You would only need to quote file_path, for example:
shell environ$("COMSPEC") & " /c dir ""c:\program files\"" /b"
environ$("COMSPEC") just returns the full path for cmd.exe.
If the executable path you wish to run does not need to be quoted then to pass it an argument that does need to be quoted:
Shell Environ$("COMSPEC") & " /c rfrompcb ""file path"""
If the exe path does need to be quoted you need to wrap it all in another pair of quotes so it looks like:
cmd.exe /c ""c:\path to\rfrompcb" "file path""
Which can be done:
Shell Environ$("COMSPEC") & " /c """"c:\path to\rfrompcb"" ""file path"""""
Related
I installed node.js in my Windows environment, and also uglify-js
I created a sequence of uglifyjs commands and saved it in a file called uglify.js
uglifyjs K:\Temp\jsfiles\jsslashcharts.js -c -m -o K:\Temp\jsfiles\jsslashcharts.js
uglifyjs K:\Temp\jsfiles\jsslashdates.js -c -m -o K:\Temp\jsfiles\jsslashdates.js
How can I run this in node.js using VBA?
The closest thing I found on Stack Overflow is Run Node.js using VBA
So I tried (unsuccessfully)
Shell "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe uglify.js", vbMaximizedFocus
The exe path contains spaces, so that will need to be double quoted, as "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" within the literal containing the command. Same goes for any arguments containing spaces.
Shell """C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe"" uglify.js", vbMaximizedFocus
Take a look at Quotation marks in string expressions (my emphasis)
You should include double quotation marks within the criteria argument in such a way so that when the value of the variable is evaluated, it will be enclosed within the quotation marks. Within a string, you must use two sets of double quotation marks to represent a single set of double quotation marks.
I'm trying to run a program with an input file.
Dim command, cfx5_exe_path, cfx_file_folder, cfx_file_name As String
command = cfx5_exe_path & " -cfx " & cfx_file_folder & cfx_file_name & ".cfx "
Shell command
so it gives an error.
the resulting value of the command in the debugger is
"c:\"Program Files"\"ANSYS Inc"\v150\CFX\bin\cfx5pre.exe -cfx c:\Users\Username\Arbeit\Programming\A321_tail_flow.cfx"
If I copy-paste that into windows cmd directly and remove first/last quotation signs, then it works perfectly.
What is the problem with Shell?
The documentation says:
If the Shell function successfully executes the named file, it returns the task ID of the started program. The task ID is a unique number that identifies the running program. If the Shell function can't start the named program, an error occurs.
and it gives a small example:
Sub test()
Dim RetVal
Dim command As String
command = "C:\WINDOWS\CALC.EXE"
RetVal = Shell(command, 1)
End Sub
Here I get Error 53: file not found as calc on Windows 7 resides somewhere else. Do you get this error?
Providing the right path to calc starts the program and returns a unique ID.
However, quoting a part of the correct path will throw the error:
command = "C:\WINDOWS\""SYSTEM32""\CALC.EXE"
but quoting the full path does not:
command = """C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CALC.EXE"""
So you must remove all embedded quotes and then quote the full path once.
I have a batch file run.bat in a network folder "L:\Common Data\myfile" and i want to execute it from an Excel's macro.
Googling around I found these sintax:
Call Shell(Environ$("COMSPEC") & " /k L:\Common Data\myfile\run.bat", vbNormalFocus)
but it fails because it reads only "L:\Common".
I tryed many suggestion found on Internet but no one succeeded.
Someone have a solution?
Path names with spaces have to be wrapped in quotes.
Call Shell(Environ$("COMSPEC") & " /k ""L:\Common Data\myfile\run.bat""", vbNormalFocus)
I'm using the flag package to interpret flags entered at the command line.
I created a variable using
ptrString := flag.String("string", "", "A test string")
flat.Parse()
Then when I want to print it,
fmt.Println("You entered " + *ptrString)
If I enter something like -string=hello! as a command line argument, it prints "hello!"
If I enter something like -string=hello\Bob as a command line argument, it prints "helloBob"
Is there a recommended way to convert or interpret the flag argument to a string that doesn't remove the backslash? (This is being tested on Linux and OS X, if the shell is interfering...)
Characters that have special meaning in the shell need to be quoted or escaped. You can find complete list in the shell's man pages (under "Quoting" in man 1 bash).
In this case, you can either quote or escape the baskslash
-string=hello\\Bob
// or
-string='hello\Bob'
I'm trying to define a new command in Vim that calls an external script with the name of the current file, but slightly modified. Here's how I defined the command:
:command MyNewCommand !/tmp/myscript.sh substitute(expand("%:p"), "-debug", "", 'g')
In other words, myscript.sh takes one parameter, which is the full pathname of the file being edited, with the string -debug in the pathname removed. My command definition doesn't work because rather than passing the pathname, Vim seems to pass to myscript.sh the entire string itself, beginning with the word substitute. How do I define the command to do what I want? Thanks :).
You can use the system() function to execute the script.
Change the command definition as follows:
:command! MyNewCommand call system('/tmp/myscript.sh ' .
\ shellescape(substitute(expand('%:p'), '-debug', '', 'g')))
To see the output of the command, replace call with echo.
You can use solution similar to #ib's one, but with ! which will show you the output of the shell command (and will also handle case when expand('%:p') contains newlines (it can if FS is fully POSIX-compliant)):
command MyNewCommand execute '!/tmp/myscript.sh' shellescape(substitute(expand('%:p'), '-debug', '', 'g'))
The generic approach is to build a string and then execute it. The problem in your command is that substitute(expand(... is not being evaluated and it's passed as is.
So in a generic example
command MyNewCommand OldCommand expand("%:p")
should be converted to
command MyNewCommand execute 'OldCommand '.expand("%:p")
That way MyNewCommand will just invoke execute with the expression 'OldCommand '.expand("%:p"). execute will evaluate the expression and therefore expand() will get evaluated to the filename and concatenated to 'OldCommand ' resulting in a string of the form 'OldCommand myfilename'. That string then gets executed as an Ex command by the same execute.