Adding parameters.

[Ashboy]

Hi there. Having a bit of a problem with a small Windows program that requires some extra parameters to be fed to it. It works fine in Windows, but in Linux it confuses command shell, I think. It splits it up in smaller bits and assumes they are seperate commands.

This is the exact line:

Code: Select all

wine MOD144.exe [ --mins | --form CGRID.exe | CGRID.exe ]

There can be no variations after the .exe, it needs to be exactly like this or it won't work. Is there any way to achive this in the terminal shell?

[Ashboy]

Eh.. not that it matters, but the last two .exe's needed to be .wav's. Sorry. Can't seem to spot an edit button.

[lahmbi5678]

Hi,

there's some ambiguosity in your post. Is that command line really a concrete example or some kind of general pattern, it looks like a regular expression (showing all the allowed possibilities)? I'm quite sure, that "[", "]" shouldn't be part of a concrete DOS command.

Please run a concrete example and post the terminal output including the command.

[Ashboy]

This isn't about dos commands. This is simply how this program works, I didn't design it. I've used it many times before, just not in a linux terminal.

[lahmbi5678]

Again, please run a sample command and post its output. It's still unclear to me, if the
"[ --mins | --form CGRID.exe | CGRID.exe ]" part is stating the general syntax of MOD144.exe (allowed options etc), or if it is part of a concrete command line, that you actually try to issue. In the later case, the "[" and "]" and "|" do have some meaning in a linux shell, but won't work that way, which might be part of the problem. You could try to put it into quotation marks, like
wine MOD144.exe "[ --mins | --form CGRID.exe | CGRID.exe ]"

Alternatively you can try "wine cmd", which would give you a dos command prompt. Then run "MOD144.exe" from there.

If it's a pure dos program, you could even try DOSBox.

[Ashboy]

It's the syntax of MOD144. It doesn't work because as you say, it means something else in Linux. I understand that very well. I tried DOSBox already, but it won't accepted it as the executable was made for Windows.

I'll give wine cmd a shot.. should circumvent the linux synstax.

[Ashboy]

Yep that did the trick. Thanks so much, I've been struggling with this for three evenings.

[lahmbi5678]

Nice to hear, that it works for you. This kind of syntax is plain wrong(tm), they shouldn't use it.

If you are still willing to experiment, try escaping (putting a \ in front of problematic special characters):
wine MOD144.exe \[ --mins \| --form CGRID.exe \| CGRID.exe \]
This will tell the linux shell to not evaluate the special characters.

Alternatively single quoting might work (double quoting still evaluates the pipes ("|"), didn't think of it):
wine MOD144.exe '[ --mins | --form CGRID.exe | CGRID.exe ]'

I had to look up the details too, when googling I found a quite useful page, see
http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/quoting

[Ashboy]

Thanks! I do aim to learn more.