Need batch file to accept piped input, or widows 'cat' equivalent that can be piped-to. 'type' and 'for /f' not working.

You should be able to do:

@echo off
more > x.txt

to receive output of dir | script.cmd  into x.txt

which then you can parse the x.txt as you wish.  You might also be better off using one redirect rather than line by line... but presumably more is messing with the data you are piping in.

(for /F "delims=" %%a in ('more') do @echo %%~a)> %temp%\sometempfile

you could also probably use this, not sure if any better or worse for you.

find /v "" > x.txt

Does the batch have to be piped into, could it not take a parameter, e.g.

yourbatch.cmd mybinaryfile.dat

Steve

Why are you piping binary data, that's typically a bad idea, piping is really meant for text data.

~bp

@Dragon-it,
    Thanks for the tries, but unfortunately, all of those give the same output/problems as the 'for /f' command I had- the output has CRLFs instead of just LFs and the binary/Stream portion is modified in a lot of ways, and made longer.

@billprew,
   I'm redirecting printer output through this script, using redmon, to convert (mostly PDFs, but anything sent to this printer) to single-page-per-file TIFs using ghostscript.  There are also other things I want to do, like crop the files, where I will need to solve this same inability-to-cat-piped-input-to-a-temp-file-problem.

I have the redirected printer to ghostscript working: You print something to it, you get sequentially numbered TIFs on your desktop. But - if you do it a 2nd, etc time, it starts the page numbers at 1 again and overwrite the previous pages printed.

I want to have the TIFs be named with both timestamps and page numbers, so subsquent printouts don't clobber the previous ones.

I can get the timestamp, but currently, ghostscript is the first command called in the script (see below), so I can't get the timestamp until after I need it.

If I could receive the piped in input into a temp file, I could then get the timestamp to use for the file name, then use that temp file as an argument to the 'type' command, to pipe that temp file to ghostscript, in the batch file.

C:\gs\bin\gs.exe -Ic:\gs\lib;C:\gs\fonts -sDEVICE=tiffg4 -sOutputFile="%timestampfilename%p%d.tif" -dNOPAUSE -dSAFER -dBATCH -r300 -sPAPERSIZE=letter -

hmm, so presumably you could get the timestamp you want regardless of the redirecting issue then as that would run the same - I presume you just want it as 'now', why not:

@echo off
set timestamp=%date:/=-%@%time::=%

i.e. crude way to get the current date and time without ? or : chars.  you could also put alll pages in a subdir perhaps, i.e.
md %timestamp% and then have "%timestamp%\%p%d" or whatever as filename.

on phone so sorry if missed something there... will look back on pc later.

steve

I agree with billprew - most of the DOS commands were designed for text data (and in Windows systems, text line termination is usually the CarriageReturn-LineFeed pair), although the copy command allows for binary data (with the /b switch) - but (like type) requires parameters rather than accepting an input pipe.

What about investigating use of Windows PowerShell scripts instead of the old DOS batch scripts?
I don't know whether or not the numerous built-in PowerShell cmdlets will provide a solution to your requirement.

If you want a date in specific format BTW try one of these methods of mine.  Get that into an environment variable and use it in your commandline for gs.exe

https://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/MS_DOS/A_1153-Using-dates-in-batch-files-scripts.html

Another alternative might be VBScript.  You can read STDIN into a variable if wanted then do what you want with, i.e. parse or write it out into a file:

Dim STDIN
STDIN = WScript.StdIn.ReadAll
WScript.Echo STDIN

Select allOpen in new window

dir | cscript //nologo stdin.vbs

I'm redirecting printer output through this script, using redmon, to convert (mostly PDFs, but anything sent to this printer) to single-page-per-file TIFs using ghostscript.  There are also other things I want to do, like crop the files, where I will need to solve this same inability-to-cat-piped-input-to-a-temp-file-problem.

Rather than using STDOUT/STDIN, why not let the printer driver redirect to an actual file, and then pick up that file in the batch script?

~bp