Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of fcisler
fcisler

asked on

sending commands to running dos application

This seems to be the most appropriate place to ask this question, but if it's not feasable then i may have to do it under programming....but

We use filenet here for document management
Part of my job every day is to do this
start > run
"csm_tool"
"HA c:\outfile.txt"
<set to output to text file>
"s"
<prints text i need here>
"q"
<exits>

it takes 5 minutes to do, and frankly i am lazy...i know i can automate it. Heres the problems and cavets though:

"csm_tool" does NOT support any command line arguments (and the vender dosent care what i think or ask, so it's out of the quetion)
i can have the exe inside print to a text file (which i am going to do and is ultimately my goal) through HA filename
if i do something like echo s | csm_tool then it goes into a loop....not sure why, yet if i do a echo q (quit) it dosent....i have no clue why it is looping until the program terminates....

so basically, i need to send HA file, then s, then q to a running dos program, or have a batch file do it for me.....is this possible? if not, i will move it over to a VB/C# forum and ask.....thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of LRHGuy
LRHGuy

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of LRHGuy
LRHGuy

To expound further, the inp.txt file should have everything you would normally enter.

So, you could create a batch file:

gocsm.bat

with:

csm_tool < inp.txt

and in inp.txt put:

HA c:\outfile.txt
s
q


That is, if I understand what you're trying to do. Some programs, though, don't accept input from the standard input, so the redirection might not work.
Avatar of fcisler

ASKER

LRHGuy,

thank you very much....dunno why i didn't think to try that....