On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Irfan Sayed <irfan_sayed2002 [at] yahoo.com> wrote:
> L:\Console>perl -e qx/"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\\Com
> mon7\\IDE\\devenv /rebuild release abc.sln /useenv"/;
>
> plz suggest on how to correctly format the command so that perl can execute that command
I'm guessing that the main problem is the Windows shell's awkward
syntax. :) I've been trying for years to make sense of it and I still
can't. :) Try this:
perl -e "print qx'C:\Program^ Files\Microsoft^ Visual^ Studio^ .NET^
2003\Common7\IDE\devenv /rebuild release abc.sln /useenv'"
In order to come up with that I needed to write a C program to be sure
arguments were being passed as I expected, then once I was sure how
arguments were going to be passed I had to play with perl to figure
out the solution. :P
<<<
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
int i;
for(i=0; i<argc; i++)
printf("%d=%s\n", i, argv[i]);
return 0;
}
>>>
Compile with MinGW with a command like this:
gcc -Wall main.c -o args.exe
Then test the arguments you're passing:
args Whatever you want here
The output should show you which string is in which argument slot. :)
cmd.exe is really weird. While ^ is supposed to be the escape
character, it seems to only escape certain special characters. As far
as I can tell you can't escape white-space.
args foo^ bar
Outputs:
0=args
1=foo
2=bar
That forces you to use double-quotes (single-quotes mean nothing
AFAIK) when an argument contains spaces, but then if you also need
embedded double-quotes then you need to double them to escape them
(instead of using ^" you have to use ""). Then, according to my
experiments, the escaped double-quote also terminates the quoted
string (which makes zero sense) so you have to start again with a new
double-quote if the rest of the argument contains any spaces... The
Windows graphical shell might be somewhat refined (in some other
people's opinion), but the Windows command shell is certainly not.
Once I had that figured out I tried to invoke my args C program using
the same rules:
perl -e "print qx'"""C:\Documents and Settings\bamccaig\args.exe"""
/rebuild release abc.sln /useenv'"
Low and behold, that does NOT work. The Windows shell complains that
"C:\Documents and Settings\bamccaig\args.exe" (WITH the double-quotes)
is not found (as an aside, I originally wrote the args program as a
batch file and got the quotes as well). :P Through experimentation, I
discovered that you can escape the whitespace using ^ here though
(again, completely doesn't make sense based on the cmd.exe interface),
which gives me:
perl -e "print qx'C:\Documents^ and^ Settings\bamccaig\args.exe
/rebuild release abc.sln /useenv'"
Which outputs:
0=C:\Documents
1=and
2=Settings\bamccaig\args.exe
3=/rebuild
4=release
5=abc.sln
6=/useenv
Which ALSO doesn't make sense! Clearly my C program is being invoked
(the output is in the expected format), but the program itself thinks
that its path is three arguments, not one. Don't ask me how Microsoft
can achieve such epic failure, but they don't seem to have any trouble
at all. My advice is to simply not use Microsoft Windows if you need
software to work reliably, but I digress...
I can't promise that I didn't make any mistakes in writing this E-mail
and testing the various ways. It makes such little sense that it's
very easy to drive yourself crazy and confuse yourself. :P
--
Brandon McCaig <http://www.bamccaig.com/> <bamccaig [at] gmail.com>
V zrna gur orfg jvgu jung V fnl. Vg qbrfa'g nyjnlf fbhaq gung jnl.
Castopulence Software <http://www.castopulence.org/> <bamccaig [at] castopulence.org>
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