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Number   :  4574
Date     :  2003-05-12
Author   :  Garry Deane
Subject  :  Re: DOS Automatic DOS Keystroke tool
Size(KB) :  3


--- In xxcopy@yahoogroups.com, "yodaslo"  wrote:
> Hello,
> garrydeane wrote-
> >I'm surprised that you 
> >couldn't get Autoit to work
> 
> Well, I could get it to work,
> but I couldn't figure out how
> to tell Autoit to enter yesterdays date.
> 
> Yes, I do have to enter a date for 
> which day I want the information for,
> and since it's always yesterdays sales 
> I need the transaction report for, I 
> have to tell it yesterdays date.
> 
> Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'll look into your
> suggestions

OK I suggest that you stick with autoit. I suspect that the delay 
while the report is being generated would be impossible to handle 
with key-fake or a similar keyboard "stuffer" because presumably 
sending an  while the report is being generated would cause 
it to abort.

When I was looking for a download site for key-fake, I noticed the 
following program at that site: 
ftp://ftp.externet.hu/pub/mirror/sac/utiltask/m403.zip. It is called 
M.exe and is intended for DOS/W9x/ME. It is a batch file enhancer 
which includes date manipulation, arithmetic, value comparisons, file 
properties, string functions, input prompts and a bunch of other 
things for extending the capabilities of batch files. It looks very 
polished.

Of significance to your problem are the extensive date functions. By 
default, the program uses a US date format of mm/dd/yy so I'll assume 
that you need to enter yesterday's date in the form of (say) dd-mm-
yy. To assign that to an environment variable called yestday you 
could simply do:

m/set yestday=[dd`[pdate`yesterday]]-[mm`[pdate`yesterday]]-[yy`
[pdate`yesterday]]

So then the issue is how to modify the autoit file so that it has 
this new value for yesterday's date. I suggest that the easiest way 
is to create 2 .aut files. The first would have all your static 
autoit commands up to the point where you need to enter the date (say 
printit1.aut). The second would have all your static autoit commands 
after you have entered the date (say printit2.aut). Then you would 
build the final autoit file on the fly within your batch file by 
starting with the first .aut file, appending the commands which 
include the %yestday% value then appending the second .aut file. So 
your batch file might be something like:

@echo off
m/set yestday=[dd`[pdate`yesterday]]-[mm`[pdate`yesterday]]-[yy`
[pdate`yesterday]]
copy printit1.aut printit.aut
echo Send, %yestday%{enter}>> printit.aut
type printit2.aut >> printit.aut
autoit printit.aut
xxcopy  

If you don't want to use M.exe, you can use Xxcopy to do the date 
maths for you! The following batch file will use xxcopy to format a 
date to your requirements and offset the date as required. It sets 
the result to %xxdate% which can be used in the calling batch file. 
If you call the following xxdate.bat, you can do this in your main 
batch file.

call xxdate dd-mm-yy -1
echo Yesterday was %xxdate%

:: xxdate.bat
@echo off
:: Use xxcopy to carry out date calculations and set %xxdate%
:: Optionally specify the date format and the date offset
:: e.g. xxdate dd-mm-yy -2 will give the date 2 days ago
:: Defaults to yyyy-mm-dd for today
set xxdate=
set dmacro=/$%1$
if %dmacro%==/$$ set dmacro=/$yyyy-mm-dd$
set offset=/tm%2
if %offset%==/tm set offset=
:: Test for valid syntax
xxcopy %dmacro% /l/ec%offset% > nul
if errorlevel 34 if not errorlevel 35 goto :error
:: Capture output from Xxcopy macro expansion (the next line may wrap)
xxcopy %dmacro% /l/ec%offset%|find /i "/l/ec"|find /v "$" > 
~getdate.bat
:: create a replacement xxcopy command
if exist xxcopy.exe ren xxcopy.exe ~xxcopy1.exe
echo @echo off>xxcopy.bat
echo set xxdate=%%1>>xxcopy.bat
call ~getdate.bat
:: Tidy up
if exist ~xxcopy1.exe ren ~xxcopy1.exe xxcopy.exe
del xxcopy.bat
goto :end
:error
echo Syntax error!
echo Usage is %0 [date format [date offset]]
echo [date format] must be a valid Xxcopy date macro
echo e.g. %0 dd-mm-yy -2
:end
if exist ~getdate.bat del ~getdate.bat
set dmacro=
set offset=

Garry



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