I have a symlink named example.avi that points to a real example.avi video file. When a program tries opens the symlink, it really opens the video file. But now I would like execute a command line whenever a program tries to open the symlink file.
Is that possible?
ps: windows
No, there is no built-in way of creating a symlink or other file system object that causes a command to be executed when it is opened by an application.
It should in principle be possible to do this with a file system filter driver. But that's very complicated. I believe there are some third-party tools to simplify this sort of task, but I don't have any experience with them.
While I am clearly ignorant on the subject of symlinks in Windows (see my comments on your question). I just played with it and proved that you could basically do this by symlinking to a wrapper for your avi. I.e. symlink to an exe or a batch file, etc. which does what you want and then opens the avi. Here's a test I ran with txt files and notepad:
Create a file called test.txt with some text. Create a file next to it called test.bat. Here's the batch:
notepad test.txt
When you run the batch, it just opens the txt in notepad.
Then I added a symlink:
mklink test2.txt test.bat
Now, when I type test2.txt in the command prompt, or double click on it, it runs the batch and opens the test.txt file. Obviously, you can use the same basic logic. It doesn't, however, fire the batch off when I open the symlink in Notepad++. It just opens to batch for editing instead.
Of course, maybe you don't want a second file, in which case you need to literally embed your avi in some wrapper. I guess we ned to know more about what you want to do. It sounds like an attempt at malware hidden in a video to me...
Related
I was wondering if it was possible to run a selfwritten ruby program just like any other program by double-clicking an icon of some sort.
And if it's possible, how do I do it?
I wrote a little program for a friend but I don't want him to have to use the command line to run it, because that's rather inconvenient (unless there is a way to just double-click and the command line opens the program itself..).
Thanks for your help!
The simple answer that should work for all versions of Windows is to just create a simple batch launcher.
Create a .bat file. I usually just create a new .txt file via "right click > new > text document". Then rename it, highlight everything, including the extension, and rename it to something like run.bat. The .bat part is important. Once you rename it, the icon should change to gears. If you can't overwrite the extension, or Windows is still treating it as a text document, you'll need to either manually save it as a bat, or disable "hide file extensions" in the explorer settings so the extension can be changed.
Edit the bat file, and put into it something like:
#echo off
YOUR RUN COMMAND HERE THAT YOU WOULD NORMALLY TYPE MANUALLY
pause
Paste the command that you would normally run manually where the capital text is. The first line is so it doesn't repeat the commands back, and the pause is so if an error happens, the command prompt doesn't immediately close. This gives you a chance to read the error.
Save it and close it. Now, if you double click on the bat file, your program should run.
Multiple ways
if it's for occasional use and for one script only I would pack it
to a Windows executable with Ocra, then you can double click
the .exe itself or a link to it
same as above but use jRuby and create a .jar file, not for beginners though
the easiest: if you configure Windows to start/run .rb files with your ruby.exe you can double click the .rb files itself and they
will execute, they will have the red Ruby stone icon
if you run a .reg file to enable drap and drop on .rb files you can combine the previous technique to drop files on the script and
they will be the parameters to the script, see my answer here for the reg file
my favorite: copy the .rb to your windows "C:\Users\your_user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo\"
folder, then you can right click file(s) or folder(s) and select
sendto and select your script, the files or folder will again be the
parameters for your script
you can create a .bat or .cmd file that starts with the path to your ruby.exe and the script as parameter, use rubyw.exe if you
don't want output
I was trying to make a batch file that compresses a specific folder (using winrar) to a specific location (not the same as the folder location), password (that I can choose myself) protects it AND does all of that without a cmd screen popping up.
I have very little knowledge of programming and managed to get some things working, but not all at the same time and in the same batch file.
Also to rar that file do I need Winrar to be installed on the computer or can I reffer to the rar.exe (copied from the Program Files Windows folder to a different location)?
AFAIK it's not possible to run a a bat file without a visible CMD window without using any additional tools. Here's a link to a post how to run a hidden console: https://superuser.com/questions/62525/run-a-batch-file-in-a-completely-hidden-way
It is possible to use just the rar.exe but I would use 7zip instead. The performance is way better, it's also portable and you have many options in the command line. So your project would contain the bat file itself, the vb script file and the 7z.exe (or rar.exe). If you want, you can even create a single .exe file out of these three by creating a SFX file: http://www.7zsfx.info/en/
Hope I could help you.
I usually perform actions in the 7zip command line program. I was thinking about creating a small script to do everything automatically, but I have never written any Windows shell script before and therefore don't even know where to begin.
I would like to make an executable script file which, when a user double-clicks on it, will call the 7zip command line and perform some actions.
First of all, is this possible? And if it is, what is the best way to do this?
You can create a batch script to do this.
It's basically command line commands that run one after another so you don't have to keep typing them in :)
Put the commands you would normally use for 7zip in a notepad file and save it with the extension .bat, then run it.
7z blah blah params
7z more params and args
All your commands will be executed automatically when the previous one finishes.
There are other programming languages you could do this in (or even VBScript) but batch would be perfectly suited to this, and you don't need to install anything extra.
Batch files can run a series of command line commands. Simply create a text file and name it with the .bat extension.
There are plenty of resources on the internet which will provide you with help.
Was reading about ADS(Alternate data streams) in windows, so came across this thing.
Working on Windows XP to test the following.
I created a file with name - sample.txt with the content - "hello there"
Created another file with name - second.txt with content - "I am hidden"
At command prompt did the following:-
type second.txt > sample.txt:newfile.txt
It executes successfully
Now, if i type this:-
notepad sample.txt:newfile.txt
Notepad opens newfile.txt with the content - "I am hidden"
Till here, its normal
Now, I tried to hide an exe file,lets say - notepad.exe behind a txt sample like this:--
(i have copied notepad.exe in the same folder)
type notepad.exe > sample.txt:newexe.exe
Above command runs successfully.
Question is, now how can i run that exe file which is now behind text file. My guess is I need some form of interpreter (like notepad.exe in the first example) to make my exe run. Does exe files require some sort of interpreter to run(like text files need some editor)??
I know, exe files can be run directly, but here in this case thats not working. Even tried:--
start second.txt:newexe.exe
but it doesnt work. Help will be greatly appreciated, as I dont know much about windows internals.
Sensibly, Windows will not allow this and will throw an Access Denied if you try to execute it, similarly there is no easy way to copy a binary stream.
With administrative privs you can mklink blah.exe sample.txt:newexe.exe which would create a symlink to the executable ADS, executable via blah.exe.
Under Windows XP you must give the full qualified name of the ADS to start (in this case I have 'hidden' depends.exe in dbgview.exe):
It is very stupid that windows will not let you add batch files to your quick launch or whatever they call in in windows 7. That bar across the bar, i can attach firefox there, command prompt, even paint (my favorite), but not a batch file. I can "pin" it to another program, which is just weird. I want it to standalone, the batch file does enough work by itself.
So lets say i have batch file. What is the simplest executable program I can write to invoke said script. Then I can finally pin all my useful batch files on that quick-jump-pin-bar.
If I remember right, you can do this by first pinning a shortcut to CMD.exe to the taskbar. Then edit the command, and change CMD.exe to CMD.exe /c MyBatchFile.bat. I believe this will execute the batch file.
Since you can only pin one cmd, here's an alternative, assuming you have the .NET framework installed - a very simple C# application:
Populate a textfile with the following contents:
class Program {
static void Main() {
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(#"c:\test.bat");
}
}
where Program is the name of the executable you want to create, and c:\test.bat is the full path to the batch file. Save the file as Program.cs. Execute the following from the command line:
c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\csc.exe Program.cs
You can replace 2.0.50727 with whatever directory exists on your machine - might be 1.1.something or 3.5 or 4.0.something - it's all the same for this scenario.
This will generate Program.exe. You can put that exe file wherever you want, and pin that executable to the taskbar. You can discard the .cs file once you're done making your executables.
Kind of a crappy solution, but it should work, assuming you don't find anything better. And if you don't have the .NET framework (which I'm not sure is even possible in Windows 7), you can install it pretty easily.
The easiest way is to create a folder, put your batch files in it, and pin the folder to the menu bar :D
You can also write a startup script, so the batch file will be executed on startup, but I don't know if you want to run those scripts on every bootup... You can also add the command prompt to the bar, and edit the startup path..
Use command switches on CMD.exe.
cmd.exe /c "myscript.bat"
As a sort of workaround you could use the following trick. Pin an arbitrary application to the task bar, Shift+right click on the pinned icon, select Properties, change 'Target' and 'Start in' accordingly. Rename it too if you like.
You can pin more than one .bat file using this technique.