Archived News from Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages, 2016 Q3

• DateDiff.exe has been updated:

a new optional command line switch /W makes the program calculate the number of Weeks in the specified timespan
for switches /D, /H, /M, /S, /W or /Y the return code ("Errorlevel") will equal the absolute value of the result

• From the Interesting News Department: PowerShell is now Open Source and available for Linux.
More info:

• A minor update for WGetIE.exe: error handling has been improved, and you can now optionally specify the program's timeout and its virtual "browser window width".

• BirdName's regular expressions are fine tuned to reject numbers in local names (try "Natterjack toad" in the old version: it returned "32", in part due to different family names used by biologists in different countries; I prefer an empty translation field over a number).

• I started removing most of the ads from advertising networks from my site — the revenues are not worth the delay in page loading, not to mention the privacy issues.
If you subscribed to ChangeDetection ("Monitor Changes" button) to keep track of changes to my site ("Monitor Changes" button), you may expect some "false positives", though most ads had already been excluded from tracking by ChangeDetection long ago.

• Release Candidate 2 of WMIGen.exe is available for download.

• The first Release Candidate of WMIGen.exe is available for download.

• The tenth public beta version of WMIGen.exe is available for download.
Some annoying problems with maximizing and "unmaximizing" the screen have been fixed.

• The ninth public beta version of WMIGen.exe, with much improved query timeout handling, is available for download.

• BirdName has been completely rewritten in C#.
Maintenance of the HTA version has been stopped, though it is still available for download.
Unlike its name suggests, BirdName is not limited to translating bird names to and from any language, in fact it can be used for any class of animals (and possibly plants as well).

• The eighth public beta version of WMIGen.exe, with improved error handling in the "Run" and "Generate" code, is available for download.

• Karen Little reported a broken link in Hardware.hta's help; this has been fixed.

Thanks Karen

• And yet another update for CountDown.exe: its new optional command line switch /R makes the program's return code equal the number of seconds remaining, i.e. if the countdown was interrupted, the return code tells you how many seconds were still remaining.
The following code demonstrates a possible application of this feature:

CountDown.exe 30 /R && GOTO:EOF

:Loop

ECHO Interrupted with %ErrorLevel% seconds remaining, continuing countdown...

CountDown.exe %ErrorLevel% /R || GOTO Loop

• CountDown.exe has been updated:

its allowed countdown range has been increased to 86400 seconds (24 hours)
the countdown can be interrupted by pressing any key

• A minor update to HideInput.exe: its help text now explains the risks of "recovering" the hidden input, and how to prevent it.

• Shell32Icons.exe is a new GUI program to view all icons available in Windows' Shell32.dll.
I wrote it for myself, to select icons for (GUI) programs I write in C#.
Just select an index, and the associated icon will be used as the program window's icon (top left of program window).
The code to extract icons from Shell32.dll came from Thomas Levesque on StackOverflow.com.

Thanks Thomas

• DateTimeBox.exe has been updated:

it now hides the TimePicker control if /D (date only) is used, or the DatePicker if /T (Time only) is used
the new optional command line switches /DE:date and /DL:date can be used to set the earliest (/DE) and latest (/DL) dates allowed in yyyy-MM-dd format
switches now accept the equal sign as delimiter besides the colon, i.e. both /DMAX:10 and /DMAX=10 are allowed
some inconsistencies with the optional command line switches /DMAX and /DMIN, reported by Dennis Bareis, have been fixed

Thanks Dennis

• It took me a while, but with code by DmitryG on StackOverflow.com I finally managed to make MessageBox.exe's dialog disappear after a specified timeout.
While working on MessageBox.exe I also made the command line a bit more "forgiving":

when specifying a default button, it is now allowed to use the default button's (English) caption, besides "Button1" .. "Button3"
the option on the command line is no longer mandatory when a timeout is specified

And escaped Unicode characters are now accepted in the title too.

Thanks Dmitry

• I added a new page on How to Hide the Console in Batch Files to the Batch File Techniques: User Interaction section of this site.
Of course this page features ConsoleState.exe and RunNHide.exe, but also several other utilities, and some techniques using native commands only.

• RunNHide.exe is a new tool to start console programs (including batch files) completely hidden.
Since RunNHide.exe itself is a Windows.Forms program, no "black square flash" will be seen when the console program or batch file is started.

• ConsoleState.exe is a new tool to hide the console, or restore its visibility, or check its current state.
Since it is started from within the batch file, a short "black square flash" will be seen when the batch file is started.
If the batch file is started by a shortcut, it can be started minimized, so in that case the "black square flash" will go unnoticed.

• MessageBox.exe has been updated: it now accepts escaped Unicode characters in the message text.
The technique to unescape Unicode characters, by "dtb", was found on StackOverflow.com.
The updated MessageBox.exe now also accepts the option HideConsole to (permanently) hide the console window.
The technique was presented by Anthony on StackOverflow.com.

Thanks "dtb" and Anthony

• Johnny reported that DropDownBox.exe did not always show itself in the foreground. He suggested to use the Form.TopMost property to solve it.
So by default the updated DropDownBox.exe's dialog window will always be on top, unless the new optional command line switch /NM is used to make it Non-Modal.

Thanks Johnny

• Chr.exe has been updated: it no longer appends a linefeed after the output character.
So, appending 43 backspaces from the command line to a text file has never been easier: FOR /L %A IN (1,1,43) DO (CHR.EXE 8 >> textfile.txt)

• The seventh public beta version of WMIGen.exe fixes some minor UI bugs and adds a "Reset" button in the Settings window to restore the "factory defaults".

• The sixth public beta version of WMIGen.exe fixes an annoyance: instead of generating lots of useless code if a class has no instances (and hence its properties cannot be enumerated), it will now show a single comment line in the generated code window.

• I'm introducing a modified layout for pages with "embedded" script samples: tabbed source code.
The general idea was "borrowed" from Microsoft's site, the required CSS/JavaScript from Chris Coyier on CSS-Tricks.com.

Thanks guys

• The first page with the new looks is my Hardware Requirements page.
The extra script samples I had to write to make the tabs useful were created with the help of the latest WMIGen beta release.

• The fifth public beta version of WMIGen.exe (compiled executable) has been released.
Focus won't be "stolen" anymore by the thread that creates the list of available namespaces (i.e. when you were typing in the Search box just after the program started, chances were that you would suddenly find yourself typing in the Namespaces box; this is now fixed).

• CountDown.exe is a new batch tool, like Windows' own SLEEP command, but showing only the number of seconds left, nothing more.
You may append its counter to a custom text, like this:

@ECHO OFF

REM Show custom text without linefeed

SET /P "=Counting down: " < NUL

CountDown 10

or even insert the counter in a line (where each « must be replaced by a BackSpace character):

@ECHO OFF

REM Show custom text without linefeed, using backspaces to move the cursor back to the start of the series of dots

SET /P "=You are .... seconds removed from your coffee break«««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««" < NUL

CountDown 3600

Note:

The « character represents the BackSpace character, or ASCII character 8.
Though it is a representation of the BackSpace key, inserting a BackSpace character in a text is not to be confused with pressing the BackSpace key while editing the text! Displaying a BackSpace character on screen in a text is equivalent to pressing the left arrow key, moving the cursor one position to the left.

How to insert a BackSpace character depends on the editor you use:

In EDIT, use Ctrl+P followed by either Alt+8 (on the numeric key pad) or Ctrl+H; unfortunately, the 16 bit EDIT program is not available in 64 bit Windows.
In Notepad or Wordpad, copy and paste the BackSpace character from some reference file you can create using EDIT or any alternative editor capable of inserting special characters.
Or use Chr.exe to store a BackSpace character on the clipboard, to paste it later:
CHR.EXE 8 | CLIP
Or write the batch file up to the point where backspaces should be inserted, save and exit the file, and use Chr.exe to append a backspace:
CHR.EXE 8 >> mybatchfile.bat
To append 43 backspaces, use:
FOR /L %A IN (1,1,43) DO (CHR.EXE 8 >> mybatchfile.bat)
Next reopen the batch file in Notepad or Wordpad and continue editing.
In Norton Commander, File Commander (and possibly other Norton Commander "clones" like Far Manager too, not tested), use Ctrl+Q followed by Ctrl+H.
In UltraEdit, press Ctrl+I followed by the BackSpace key.

• The fourth public beta version of WMIGen.exe (compiled executable) has been released.
C support has been restored, and C++ has been added to the list of supported output languages.

• A question sent by e-mail made me write TouchDetect.exe, a new command line tool to detect touch enabled input devices.
It uses the WINAPI (user32.dll) GetSystemMetrics function, which to me looks like it is more reliable than the PointingType property of WMI's Win32_PointingDevice class.
Since I don't have any touch enabled devices om my own Windows computers, I decided to release this first hardly tested alpha release, hoping for some feedback from you.
Just run the executable and check its return code (ErrorLevel) to test for touch enabled input devices.

Update: First test results seem to suggest this touch detection method isn't fool proof either. More testing will be required.

• I figured detecting touch enabled input devices might not be the only useful application for the WINAPI GetSystemMetrics function, so I wrote GetSystemMetrics.exe, a wrapper for the WINAPI function.
Specify a SystemMetric by name or index to get the value on screen and as return code (ErrorLevel), or use /L to list all SystemMetric names, indexes and values.
The results can be interpreted with the list of SystemMetrics and their values on MSDN. This URL will be opened automatically when the optional command line switch /U is used.

News Archives 2016 Q3