I basically would like to execute a (Cygwin-) Ruby program by clicking on some icon on my desktop. My first attempt went like this:
Create a desktop link
As a link target, have something like
c:\cygwin64\bin\ruby /path/to/my/ruby/program
This works, but it also opens a window where Ruby "runs in", which is not what I want to have.
If it were ActiveState Perl, I would have a command "wperl", which executes Perl without creating a Window, but such an feature doesn't seem to exist for Ruby, at least not for the Cygwin distribution.
I tried to change the link to
cmd /MIN /C c:\cygwin64\bin\ruby /path/to/my/ruby/program
hoping, that this would run the window minimized, but same effect as before, so I think I need to program somehow a wrapper script which suppresses the creation of this window. Does anybody know how this can be done, preferably using the Windows Batch language or some clever commands in the Cygwin tool chain?
Related
I have a situation in which I wanted to utilize the camera app in Windows 10 from my Microsoft Access program. Normally I could just send a command to execute the program's executable, but with the metro app there is no straightforward executable.
The basic code I use is this:
Shell """" & PthToExe & """", vbNormalFocus
PthToExe is the path name for the executable.
I looked around a decent bit, but was unable to find any simple solutions and ended up coming up with my own. My solution is to make a shortcut link to the camera application and then to launch the link.
In order to make a shortcut link in Windows 10, you can click on the start button, go to "All Apps", find the app you want (in my case "Camera"), and then click and drag it to the desktop.
Now that you have a shortcut, you can launch the shortcut from a command line. (So my shortcut doesn't clutter up my desktop, I dragged it off my desktop and into a folder on the "C" drive.)
Type the path into a command prompt like this and hit enter to test launching your app: C:\GJ\Camera.lnk
So that solves the problem if you wanted to launch from a command line. For some reason, though, Access would not accept that command. The way I got around it was I put the command in a batch file (Edit: Alternatively, see HansUp's comment). To do that, you just need to open notepad, type in the same thing you typed in the command prompt, save the note pad document, and then rename the document to have a .bat extension.
You can then execute the .bat file from Microsoft Access as follows:
Shell "C:\GJ\OpenCamera.bat", vbMinimizedNoFocus
Note that normally, I use vbNormalFocus when running the shell command, but in this case, it is desirable not to see the little command prompt open before the actual program opens.
So I've done some digging to try and find a way to run a script in the background on startup. The only solution I've found is to use:
Set WinScriptHost = Nothing
Is this a reasonable way to do it? Or could it cause some issues? I mean, from what I can tell, it just stops WinScriptHost from being used to refer to an object. But I feel like that could cause trouble in some scripts. So, should I avoid using this method and do something else?
Thanks!
CScript is for console windows, consoles programs by their definitions have a console. WScript is for GUI programs, unlike console programs, windows are optional (although almost all programs will create a hidden main window if not creating a visible window, as windows are how Windows communicates with a program).
Using WshShell.Run, which has a window style parameter, you can run cmd hidden eg cmd /c cscript script.vbs.
I need to write a huge VBscript to automatically run an application and I'm looking for a way to comfortably monitor what I'm actually doing, in other words, to display the values of some/all variables involved in my script.
I'm used to work with Matlab, where I have a comfortable workspace browser. When I run a Matlab script, all variables, their types and their values are accessible in that workspace and can be checked.
The VBscript I write with Notepad++ (it needs to be a free editor) and the only way I found to display variables was echoing them via wscript and cscript.
I set up the shortcuts.xml with the following line to run my script directly from Notepad++:
<Command name="Run with CScript" Ctrl="yes" Alt="no" Shift="yes" Key="116">cmd /K %windir%\system32\cscript.exe "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)"</Command>
In case I include commands in my script like
Wscript.Echo myVar
Wscript.Echo "Hello World!"
and run it with the newly introduced shortcut, a cmd window pops up and displays the value of myVar and "Hello World!".
But the next time I run the script a new window pops up. So my question is:
Is it possible get a continuously opened output window, displaying all echoed values everytime I run a script? I actually want to put the window on a second screen and keep the values from previous runs. So I can enter a line Wscript.Echo something, run, check, enter something else and so on, without fiddling around with a bunch of opened windows.
Alternatively, is there any open-source/free editor which offers an accessible workspace like the one in Matlab?
The open-source editor SciTE offers what I was looking for.
The default settings in vb.properties enable a similar behavior like in Notepad++
command.build.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript "$(FilePath)"
command.build.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=1
One can change it as follows to get the output into the integrated console.
command.go.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript.exe //nologo "$(FilePath)"
command.go.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=0
F5 runs the script and Shift+F5 cleans the output.
Another option is the NppExec Plugin for Notepad++ suggested by #Ansgar Wiechers, which adds a console. The script can be run with cscript.exe /nologo "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)" then.
Use a debugger. Start your script with the (meta)option //X. If you are lucky, you already have installed software (MS Office, Visual Studio (Express)) that provides a debugger for VBScript. If not do a bit of research to find an Express version suitable to your OS.
You can almost write native VBScript in the VBA editor, so if you have Excel or whatever you can use this to debug, then go through some steps to convert back to VBScript. That's what I usually do.
When i click on a .rb file to run it a CMD window pops up for a brief second and then closes again. This is probably a really nooby question thats easily fixed but i've looked everywhere for help. But like i said it pops up for a brief second and i THINK while its up its executing the code but when the codes done it closes so i don't know if i'm making mistakes in code or other important things like that.
Run the program through the command prompt (CMD), that way you can see the result, otherwise the window closes when the program exits.
Alternatively, you can prevent the program from exiting by putting some sort of blocking instruction at the end of the script, such that the program waits for user input before exiting.
Press Windows_Key+R and then type CMD. Browse to the location of the file and then type ruby your_ruby_file.rb. The program is running, but Windows automatically closes the window upon completion of the command.
To get Windows to run your *.rb files through Ruby when you click on them in the UI, you have to associate the .rb extension with the ruby.exe executable. Such an association is called a "Windows File Association." Here's a Microsoft Knowledge Base article that'll tell you how to create such a thing.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307859
I started using vim for my programming projects (mostly Ruby) and mostly everything works just as I want but I have a problem with compiling.
Lets say I am working on a Ruby script and I want to run it. I type :ruby sometging.rb (mapped to some other key). Then vim opens a new cmd.exe window and runs 'ruby something.rb'. Then it waits for me to press ENTER to close the window and continue working on the script.
Is there a way to configure vim on windows so that it always runs the script I'm working on in a separete window (always the same one, if none exists => open one), and not ask me to confirm with enter?
Don't know about gvim, but in normal vim you could put something like
map R <ESC>:tabnew<CR><ESC>:;%!ruby filename.rb<CR>
in your ~/.vimrc which would execute a Ruby file in a newtab when pressing R in command mode.
I've not used Ruby, but for I've found Dr Chip's RunView plugin really useful for running other interpreted languages.
Once it's installed, you can enter:
:RunView! <interpreter>
(where <interpreter> is presumably 'ruby' in your case) and it will open a (vertically if you include the !) split window with the output from passing the contents of the current window to the interpreter. Each time it is run, a new result log is appended to the end of the file (with a date and time stamp separating them).
If you have any issues with it, I'd recommend you contact Dr Chip via the Vim mailing list: he's very helpful (in fact he wrote the original version of RunView in response to a request I made on the mailing list).
This isn't exactly perfect but I use this to launch Python scripts.
command -nargs=* PY3 !start cmd /K Python.exe "%:p" <args>
It starts up a window that stays alive and doesn't interfere with my VIM window. Unfortunately it doesn't load it into an existing window.