YES YOU can call vbs or bat file to execute in QB

[campfishitus]

What would an example be to call a .vbs file to execute in qbasic? or how would you call a .bat file to execute in qb.

[Mikrondel]

SHELL "somecommand"
executes that command.
SHELL "somefile.bat"
will execute that file if it is in the current directory, or you can
SHELL "D:\stuff\somefile.bat"

Remember this is a DOS-based shell so you cannot use long file names. You must use another program to execute vbs files, but if you have one it should be OK.

If you want more help then please ask.

[campfishitus]

First thanks for your reply! Well that command gets me to a dos prompt and I can type in the file name and run the bat file. Is there any way for qbasic to pass the file name to the dos prompt run the bat file then exit with out me typing it in? The bat file does contain VBS executable which copying system event log to a file. That part works fine, im just trying to automate the process.

[Ildûrest]

I don't believe that should be happening.

SHELL
on its own starts a command prompt; but SHELL with a string after it will pass that string to the command prompt and exit when done. Could you show me the SHELL line as in your program?

[buff1]

Here's a suggestion
create a bat file that calls the qb program. Inside the qb program,
write another bat (whose name is included in the first bat file)

one.bat
---------
@echo off
:Start
call myprog.exe 'qb program
call x.bat
goto Start

myprog.bas
--------------
open "x.bat" for output as #1
print #1,"@echo off"
print #1,"call somevbprog"
close #1
system

Now this is now tested but should work.
each time the x.bat can change depending on choices made.

[Ildûrest]

Interesting suggestion but you could use SHELL "x.bat" rather than quitting the QB program to the same effect.

[campfishitus]

Ildurest, here is my shell
shell "eventtest.bat" it returns with bad command or file name.. The spelling of the .bat file is correct. (first thing I check) It is located in the same directory, This .bat file contains just 3 lines of code for VBS they are....

eventquery.vbs /l application > \\lre-wk-deimcrj\eventtest\application.csv
eventquery.vbs /l security > \\lre-wk-deimcrj\eventtest\security.csv
eventquery.vbs /l system > \\lre-wk-deimcrj\eventtest\system.csv
They run just fine and takes the event logs for application security and system logs and copies them to deimcrj machine So this part works fine. I just want to call and run this vbs script and pass the inputs thru shell to run and exit from dos. NO intervention from me.. Love the automatic stuff.
Thanks to all of you for your suggestions

[campfishitus]

Hey finally got qb to read the bat file (problem was the bat file name was too long shortened from eventtest.bat to event.bat) Now it reads the commands in the bat file and prints "bad command or file name" under each line contained in event.bat Now is this because QB does not understand VB? or qb cannot execute VB?

[campfishitus]

FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT, WITH ALL OF YOUR HELP........
HERE IS HOW TO DO IT!
SHELL "CD\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32"
SHELL "CSCRIPT EVENTQUERY.VBS /L APPLICATION> (ANY PATH YOU WANT TO ASSIGN AND ASSIGN FILE NAME)
tHANKS TO ALL OF YOU MY HEADACHE IS ALMOST OVER. nOW ALL I HAVE TO DO IS GET A TIMER RUNNING SO THE BAT FILE WILL RUN AUTOMATICALLY. BUT AT LEAST RUNNING A VB STATEMENT FROM QB IS RESOLVED. OH JOY!!!!!

[Mikrondel]

Ok, now for some more expert advice...

This will only work under Windows NT/2000/XP.
SHELL "cmd /c commandgoeshere"

cmd.exe is the Windows (as opposed to DOS) command interpreter. It understands long filenames, and would probably launch your vbscript interpreter just by typing the name of a VBS file. (Because it will look it up in Windows' file associations list)

SO you may consider trying
SHELL "CMD /C Eventquery.vbs /l application > \\lre-wk-deimcrj\eventtest\application.csv"
(providing you're in the right directory)

By the way, if you get help with 'cmd /?' you'll see that /C does the stuff after it then terminates, while /K does stuff and then remains at the prompt, though in this case you probably don't need that.

Also, to use long filenames from DOS programs, i.e. within QBasic, when SHELLing without cmd, or when using COMMAND.COM, you generally take the first 6 non-space letters of the name, follow with a ~ and then a number (usually 1 unless it's already taken) and then the extension. E.g. "eventtest.bat" would usually be "eventt~1.bat" and "My Documents" is normally "MyDocu~1"

-------------
Now, about this 'timer'. QBasic has a "TIMER" command that returns the number of seconds that have passed since midnight (according to the system clock), accurate to about 0.02 of a second. You can use this to fairly accurately time something, by storing the time "now", then waiting until the time reaches X seconds from now.

This is a half-second delay:

EndTime! = TIMER + 0.5
DO
LOOP WHILE TIMER < EndTime!

Obviously the loop just keeps spinning away until the time reaches the value we want.

HOWEVER, as this is a DOS program, practically anything it does will be given the same amount of resources. In other words, whether it's number crunching like crazy, or checking what time it is like crazy, it'll still be eating up your CPU.

Which is why I came up with hangfor. aleks.budzynowski.info/host/hangfor.exe
It's a program (written in C) that actually *pauses* for a specified number of seconds (It essentially tells Windows to wake it up after this time). You can run it from QB with something like
SHELL "hangfor 6.5"


That's it for now. Congratulations on solving much of your problem by yourself. Any more queries are welcome.