COBOL Screen Section - cobol

We have RM COBOL utility which has a screen section, which takes input from the user. This input can be a Function key as well. (like F1, F2, etc)
I am trying to automate it using shell scripting, is it possible to pass these function key parameters to screen-section input?

Assuming that RM COBOL works similarly to AcuCobol, yes.
But ... how is a function key represented? Well, for a particular terminal, it will produce a character or a stream of characters to represent that function key. Different terminals (and I'm including terminal emulators here) send different values for function keys, so you'll need to identify what kind of terminal is being used. Another complicating thing is that some terminals send different values for function keys depending on what mode the terminal is in.
My suggestions:
Record what $TERM is set to and be sure to set that environment variable to the same value in the script.
Use the script utility to record the input and output of the program to determine what the terminal sends when you press the function key. Then you can use that value in your script.

Related

Console: abort Read or Readln

The console Read command does not recognize VK_ESCAPE. When using ReadConsoleInput, it is case insensitive. Is there something adequate to Read/Readln, which reports an abort?
The docs on Read() tell you it's for characters, not keys in general. It will also not help you to i.e. recognize PgUp or Print. That's also why it is so similar to Readln(), which unsurprisingly is for text, too, not separate keys being pressed.
A console process does not know by default what "abort" means. Common knowledge (even unbound to Windows) is that Ctrl+C and/or Ctrl+Break terminate the process.
Neither a ReadConsoleInput() nor is its KEY_EVENT record case insensitive: again you get keys, not characters. Which means you have to check if .dwControlKeyState has either SHIFT_PRESSED or CAPSLOCK_ON set to translate all the keys into an appropriate character (i.e. only Shift+S makes it an uppercase S).
It's up to you to decide when to interpret keys and when treating input as text/characters. Yes: recognizing Esc while using Readln() will never work - you'd have to reinvent your own Readln(), i.e. dealing with all the input, including your favorite keys, such as Esc. This will also help you discover which keys (that you type) lead to which VK constants.

How should an application parse a list of filenames from cmdline args?

I'd like to write an app, my_app, that takes a list of named options and a list of filenames from the cmdline, e.g.,
% my_app --arg_1 arg_1_value filename_1 filename_2
The filenames are the last args and are not associated with any named options.
From the cmdline parsers, e.g., flag in Golang, that I've worked, it seems that the parsers will only extract the args that are configured, and that I'd need to identify the list of filenames manually by walking thru the original argv[] list.
I'd like to ask if there are parsers (or their options that I may have overlooked) that can also extract those filenames, or they only return the unprocessed args, and therefore, I could assume that these are the filenames.
The Golang flag module makes the trailing arguments available as the slice flag.Args, which is the trailing part of os.Args.
That's a pretty typical way for command-line argument parsers to work, although the details will vary according to language. The standard C library argument parser, fir example, provides the global optind, which is the index in argv of the first non-flag argument.

lldb python basic - print value of a global array while inside a breakpoint in a function

(Some background: I am not experienced with lldb or python and don't work on them frequently, but currently need to make some basic scripts for debugging an iphone program)
I am currently stopped at a breakpoint in side a function, and want to check the value of an array that has been accessed inside this function
This array is declared as
Float32 my_array[128];
and has global scope. I can view the array using print command, but I would like to make a python script so that I have more control over the output formatting and possibly plot the array elements as a graph using matplolib later on.
I am looking at the sample python code given in this question, and using the python given there I have verified that I can view local variables in this function (where currently I am stopped at a break point). For example, if I change 'base' in base=frame.FindVariable('base') to my local variable 'k' (the local variable is not an array) ,
base=frame.FindVariable('k')
then print base I can see the value of k. However, if I try this,
base=frame.FindVariable('my_array')
and do print base it gives me No value. How can I write a python command to get the values of any kind of variable currently in scope? Preferably it works for normal variables (int, float), arrays, and pointers, but if not, finding values of arrays are more important at the moment.
SBFrame.FindVariable searches among the variables local to that frame. It doesn't search among the global variables.
For that you need to use a search with a wider scope. If you know that the global variable is in the binary image containing the your frame's code - lldb calls that binary image a Module - then you can find the module containing that frame and use SBModule.FindGlobalVariables. If that's not true, you can search the whole target using SBTarget.FindGlobalVariables. If you know that only one global variable of that name exists, you can use FindFirstGlobalVariable variant.
All these commands will find variables of any type, and they all consistently return SBValues so you can format them in a consistent manner regardless of how you find them. For statically allocated arrays, the array elements are its children, so you can fetch individual elements with SBValue.GetChildAtIndex.
You can get to a SBFrame's module like:
module = frame.module
and its target:
target = frame.thread.process.target
lldb separates the contexts in which to search for variables primarily for efficiency. If SBFrame.FindVariable searched for globals as well as locals, a mistyped variable name would be a much more expensive mistake. But it also makes the call more predictable since you will never get some random global from some shared library that the system loaded on your behalf.

Set gfortran environment variables on Windows [duplicate]

In a Windows batch file, when you do the following:
set myvar="c:\my music & videos"
the variable myvar is stored with the quotes included. Honestly I find that very stupid. The quotes are just to tell where the string begins and ends, not to be stored as part of the value itself.
How can I prevent this from happening?
Thanks.
set "myvar=c:\my music & videos"
Notice the quotes start before myvar. It's actually that simple.
Side note: myvar can't be echoed afterwards unless it's wrapped in quotes because & will be read as a command separator, but it'll still work as a path.
http://ss64.com/nt/set.html under "Variable names can include Spaces"
This is the correct way to do it:
set "myvar=c:\my music & videos"
The quotes will not be included in the variable value.
It depends on how you want to use the variable. If you just want to use the value of the variable without the quotes you can use either delayed expansion and string substitution, or the for command:
#echo OFF
SETLOCAL enabledelayedexpansion
set myvar="C:\my music & videos"
As andynormancx states, the quotes are needed since the string contains the &. Or you can escape it with the ^, but I think the quotes are a little cleaner.
If you use delayed expansion with string substitution, you get the value of the variable without the quotes:
#echo !myvar:"=!
>>> C:\my music & videos
You can also use the for command:
for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%P in (%myvar%) do (
#echo %%P
)
>>> C:\my music & videos
However, if you want to use the variable in a command, you must use the quoted value or enclose the value of the variable in quotes:
Using string substitution and delayed expansion to use value of the variable without quotes, but use the variable in a command:
#echo OFF
SETLOCAL enabledelayedexpansion
set myvar="C:\my music & videos"
md %myvar%
#echo !myvar:"=! created.
Using the for command to use the value of the variable without quotes, but you'll have to surround the variable with quotes when using it in commands:
#echo OFF
set myvar="C:\my music & videos"
for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%P in (%myvar%) do (
md "%%P"
#echo %%P created.
)
Long story short, there's really no clean way to use a path or filename that contains embedded spaces and/or &s in a batch file.
Use jscript.
Many moons ago (i.e. about 8 years give or take) I was working on a large C++/VB6 project, and I had various bits of Batch Script to do parts of the build.
Then someone pointed me at the Joel Test, I was particularly enamoured of point 2, and set about bringing all my little build scripts into one single build script . . .
and it nearly broke my heart, getting all those little scripts working together, on different machines, with slightly different setups, ye Gods it was dreadful - particularly setting variables and parameter passing. It was really brittle, the slightest thing would break it and require 30 minutes of tweaking to get going again.
Eventually - I can be stubborn me - I chucked the whole lot in and in about a day re-wrote it all in JavaScript, running it from the command prompt with CScript.
I haven't looked back. Although these days it's MSBuild and Cruise Control, if I need to do something even slightly involved with a batch script, I use jscript.
The Windows command interpreter allows you to use the quotes around the entire set command (valid in every version of windows NT from NT 4.0 to Windows 2012 R2)
Your script should just be written as follows:
#echo OFF
set "myvar=C:\my music & videos"
Then you may put quotes around the variables as needed.
Working with the CMD prompt can seem esoteric at times, but the command interpreter actually behaves pretty solidly in obeying it's internal logic, you just need to re-think things.
In fact, the set command does not require you to use quotes at all, but both the way you are doing your variable assignment and the way the ,method of using no quotes can cause you to have extra spaces around your variable which are hard to notice when debugging your script.
e.g. Both of the below are technically Valid, but you can have trailing spaces, so it's not a good practice:
set myvar=some text
set myvar="some text"
e.g. Both of the below are good methods for setting variables in Windows Command interpreter, however the double quote method is superior:
set "myvar=Some text"
(set myvar=Some value)
Both of these leave nothing to interpretation the variable will have exactly the data you are looking for.
strong text However, for your purposes, only the quoted method will work validly because you are using a reserved character
Thus, you would use:
set "myvar=c:\my music & videos"
However, even though the variable IS correctly set to this string, when you ECHO the sting the command interpreter will interpret the ampersand as the keyword to indicate another statement follows.
SO if you want to echo the string from the variable the CMD interpreter still needs to be told it's a text string, or if you do not want the quotes to show you have to do one of the following:
echo the variable WITH Quotes:
Echo."%myvar%"
echo the variable WITHOUT Quotes:
Echo.%myvar:&=^&%
<nul SET /P="%myvar%"
In the above two scenarios you can echo the string with no quotes just fine. Example output below:
C:\Admin> Echo.%myvar:&=^&%
C:\my music & videos
C:\Admin> <nul SET /P="%myvar%"
C:\my music & videos
C:\Admin>
Try using the escape character '^', e.g.
set myvar=c:\my music ^& videos
You'll have you be careful when you expand myvar because the shell might not treat the & as a literal. If the above doesn't work, try inserting a caret into the string too:
set myvar=c:\my music ^^^& videos
Two solutions:
Don't use spaces or other characters that are special to the command interpreter in path names (directory or file names). If you use only letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens (and a period before the extension to identify the file type), your scripting life will become immeasurably simpler.
I have written and otherwise collected a plethora of tools over the years, including a DOS utility that will rename files. (It began as something that just removed spaces from filenames, but morphed into something that will replace characters or strings within the filenames, even recursively.) If anyone's interested, I will get my long-neglected web site up and running and post this and others.
That said, variables aren't just for holding pathnames, so...
As others have already pointed out, SET "myvar=c:\my music & videos" is the correct workaround for such a variable value. (Yes, I said workaround. I agree that your initial inclination to just quote the value ("my music & videos") is far more intuitive, but it is what it is, as they say.

SPSS syntax: how can I generate a var_list of all variables from the active dataset?

Frequently, PSPP/SPSS syntax documentation (example) suggests I must to pass a list of variables with /VARIABLES=var_list and this is not an optional subcommand.
But I have a lot of datasets to process. I would like to programmatically get a list of all variables in the active dataset, pass that to a procedure, and then generate a file from the procedure output.
I've tried /VARIABLES=* but that didn't work.
error: DESCRIPTIVES: Syntax error at `*': expecting variable name.
You can use display variables. or display dictionary. to generate a table of all variables and their attributes which could then be captured using OMS. However if you want to pass all variables to a function that expects a list you can use all, i.e. descriptives /variables= all..
/VARIABLES is often optional in procedures, but ALL stands for all the variables. If you need to refine by a particular measurement level, type or other metadata, try the SPSSINC SELECT VARIABLES extension command. This command applies various filters based on the metadata and creates a macro with the variables that pass. You can then use that in any context.

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