What does Windows 'shell' expect?

[Phil Davis]

Hi Graham,

As you [and I] now know,"start" is a non-trivial command - it has lots of 
choices you can make in running it. To see them all, enter this at a Windows 
command prompt:
     start /?

Or you can see them in a LC window using my 'Shell Command Help' plugin, 
available in RevOnline.

Best -
Phil


On 5/12/11 8:01 AM, Graham Samuel wrote:
> Mark, thanks - your suggestion means that the example in the docs is just plain wrong (not enough quotes - apparently you need an empty set of quotes before the one with the program name). But I doubt if this will solve the problem of a program name with a space in it. So I still want to know what 'shell' expects. Also, what if the .exe isn't in "Program Files"? It looks as if the 'start' function makes some assumptions about the path to the program. It is hard to step out of the LC environment without learning a lot of other stuff...
>
> I will do a few tests and then at least add a comment on the 'launch' dictionary entry - but I am scared of my own ignorance on this subject.
>
> Graham
>
>
> On Thu, 12 May 2011 12:16:42 +0200,  Mark Schonewille<m.schonewille at economy-x-talk.com>  wrote:
> To: How to use LiveCode<use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>
>> Graham,
>>
>> Try this:
>>
>> set the hideConsoleWindows to true
>> put "start"&&  quote&  quote&&  quote&  "myProgram.exe"&  quote into myShell
>> get shell(myShell)
>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Mark Schonewille
>>
>> Economy-x-Talk Consulting and Software Engineering
>> Homepage: http://economy-x-talk.com
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/xtalkprogrammer
>> KvK: 50277553
>>
>> New: Download the Installer Maker Plugin 1.6 for LiveCode here http://qery.us/ce
>>
>> On 12 mei 2011, at 12:03, Graham Samuel wrote:
>>
>>> Following the instructions for "launch" in the LC docs, I tried the substitute method suggested:
>>>
>>> get shell("start MyProgram.exe")
>>>
>>> this didn't work using the name of the program in Windows Explorer, presumably because there was a space in the name.
>>>
>>> I also tried to get a path to the program, which was reported by LC as
>>>
>>> C:/Program Files/My Tests/My Test.exe
>>>
>>> and this failed too, with Windows reporting that it couldn't find "Program". So shell doesn't like spaces. I thought that one could get rid of that by replacing space with "%20" but that didn't work either.
>>>
>>> Pardon my ignorance, but what should I have done?
>>>
>>> Graham
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-- 
Phil Davis

PDS Labs
Professional Software Development
http://pdslabs.net