Custom Query (44 matches)

Command line under 4OS2 3.08 & result:

[j:\images] xcopy g:\temp\*.pdf .

Source files are being read...

SYS1186: XCOPY cannot access the source file.
Source files are being read...

SYS1186: XCOPY cannot access the source file.
Source files are being read...

SYS1186: XCOPY cannot access the source file.
Source files are being read...

G:\temp\Federal 941 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return.pdf

1 file(s) copied.

Run under CMD:

[J:\images]xcopy g:\temp\*.pdf .

Source files are being read...

G:\temp\Federal 941 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return.pdf
G:\temp\Virginia VA-5 2012-09 Employer's Return of Income Tax Withheld.pdf
G:\temp\Virginia VEC-FC-20 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Tax Report.pdf
G:\temp\Virginia VEC-FC-21 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Payroll Report.pdf

4 file(s) copied.

Command line under 4OS2 2.08 (again), with quotes around the wildcard spec:

[j:\images] xcopy "g:\temp\*.pdf" .

Source files are being read...

G:\temp\Federal 941 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return.pdf
G:\temp\Virginia VA-5 2012-09 Employer's Return of Income Tax Withheld.pdf
G:\temp\Virginia VEC-FC-20 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Tax Report.pdf
G:\temp\Virginia VEC-FC-21 3Q 2012 Employer's Quarterly Payroll Report.pdf

4 file(s) copied.

(COPY works as expected with the wildcard and no quotes, successfully transferring each file.)

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to know when one may encounter stray quotes in filenames, particularly when files have been created on other platforms or by people who are not aware of the implications of such things on the command line. This means that until/unless this issue is addressed, it is always necessary to surround wildcard paths in quotations or use COPY instead of XCOPY (not sure offhand what other commands might be impacted by this).

Presently, _DATE (in the US locale) results in:

mm-dd-yy

which makes it unsuitable for such things as using it in batch scripts for creating date-based directory names, when one wants to sort them by yyyy-mm-dd.

Similarly, _DAY results in:

dd

or

d

(the latter when the current date is prior to the 10th of the month). This means that when padding is desired, it must be explicitly stated, as in:

%@right[2,0%_DAY%]

which can be cumbersome for the part-time scripter, such as I.

I propose adding the ability to format such strings either with INI settings or ENV vars, e.g.:

SET DATEFMT=YYYY-MM-DD

or

SET DAYFMT=DD

Use case:

What I wanted was a simple one-liner for a command line to create a target directory for rsync, as in:

X:\{hostname}\%_DATE\{volume}

so that the above would be expanded to something like:

X:\laptop\2013-12-08\DATA

To achieve that formatting with 4OS2 3.08, the code would be:

X:\{hostname}\%[_YEAR]-%@right[2,0%_MONTH]-%@right[2,0%_DAY]\{volume}

which seems a bit cumbersome.

Following onto my previous enhancement request (ticket #24), I propose a new internal variable, _TS, to return a formatted timestamp.

Currently, Steve advises that he uses something like:

%[_YEAR]%@right[2,0%_MONTH]%@right[2,0%_DAY]-%@right[2,0%_HOUR]%@right[2,0%_MINUTE]

and sets that in an ENV var (SET TS=). By adding _TS as an internal variable and the associated TSFMT formatting template (per my suggestion in ticket #24):

SET TSFMT=YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM

or

SET TSFMT=YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS

all that would be required would be to use a simple:

%_TS

to insert a timestamp of the desired precision on the command line or in a batch file.