Archived News from Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages, 2022 Q3

• URLEscape.exe is a new command line tool to URL-escape a URL specified on the command line, or from a text file or from redirected input.
It does not escape colons and forward slashes!
Be aware that if you want to "capture" the output in a FOR /F loop, escaped spaces (%20) may be interpreted as %2 (second command line argument) followed by a zero.

• CompareImages.exe is a new command line tool to compare 2 images pixel by pixel, ignoring EXIF and IPTC metadata.
I wrote it to automate the process of restoring EXIF metadata in JPG files edited with Corel paintshop Pro (which corrupts part of the EXIF metadata).
After editing a photograph with Corel paintshop Pro and saving it as JPG file, I use ExifTool by Phil Harvey to copy the EXIF data from the raw image to the edited JPG file:
exiftool.exe -TagsFromFile myimage.cr2 myimage.jpg
ExifTool renames the original myimage.jpg to myimage.jpg_original and saves the modified image under the original myimage.jpg name.
So next, if myimage.jpg_original exists, I use CompareImages.exe to check if I can delete the original file (the one with the corrupted EXIF data):

CompareImages.exe myimage.jpg myimage.jpg_original

IF %Errorlevel% EQU 0 DEL myimage.jpg_original

WARNING: Don't delete files based on this tool's output unless you have a verified backup available!
Optionally, you can use CloneDate or CaptureDate to set the file time to the capture time.
Comparing images can be done interactively too, I used WinMerge up till now, but having to restore well over 10,000 photos I decided to automate it.

• ClipboardAppend.exe and ClipboardPrepend.exe are 2 new command line tools to send text to the clipboard, appending or prepending it to text already in the clipboard.

• A bug in LoCase.exe was discovered: it would pass the input unmodified if the /S switch was used without the /L switch.
This has been fixed.

• LoCase.exe has been updated: it can now optionally turn a specified part of a string or filename to lowercase, leaving the rest unchanged.

• Trim.exe is a new command line tool to trim leading and trailing whitespace (including linefeeds) from text specified on the command line, or from a text file or from redirected input.

• HTMLEscape.exe is a new command line tool to HTML-escape text specified on the command line, or from a text file or from redirected input.

• An additional test for improperly or unterminated curly braces has been added to CheckVarsPHP.exe.

• CheckVarsPHP.exe has been updated: it now does check for nested functions or unterminated curly braces.

• CheckVarsPHP.exe is a new quick-and-dirty program to check PHP code for unused variables and functions.
Though it was derived from CheckVarsVBS.exe, there are some differences:

CheckVarsPHP considers a variable unused if it occurs just once, except for superglobal variables ($GLOBALS, $_SERVER, $_GET, $_POST, $_FILES, $_COOKIE, $_SESSION, $_REQUEST and $_ENV)
CheckVarsPHP does not check for nested functions

• Bob Berry sent me sample batch code to demonstrate a flaw in batch programming:

IF condition (...)

ELSE (...)

will return incorrect results, especially when nested, but it will not generate a warning or error message.
The proper format is
IF condition (...) ELSE (...)
where the parts between parentheses may or may not be spread over multiple lines:

IF condition (

    ...

) ELSE (

    ...

)

As this error is easy to detect and correct, I added a test for this error in my BatCodeCheck program.

Thanks Bob

News Archives 2022 Q3