Table of Contents
Returning errors from Windows commands
by Jonathan Harston, August 2010
The OSCLI command can be used to execute a Windows command. However, if the command fails, no error is generated, the Windows command interpreter merely displays an error message. You may see this appearing in a DOS command box before it quickly disappears.
However, the Windows command interpreter and properly-written commands output error message to the standard-error output stream. This can be redirected to a file, and then any contents examined later. The following function does this.
DEF FNwin_cmd(cli$) LOCAL ch%,err$,tmp$:tmp$=@tmp$+STR$TIME+"." OSCLI "cmd /c "+cli$+" 2>"+tmp$ ch%=OPENIN(tmp$):IF ch%=0:="" err$=GET$#ch%:CLOSE#ch%:OS."Delete "+tmp$ =err$
This redirects the error output to a file, then reads that file to see if anything has been output to it. Bear in mind that if the called command displays its error reports to standard-out instead of standard-error, then it will return an empty string.
Examples
>PRINT FNwin_cmd("junk")
'junk' is not recognised as an internal or external command.
>PRINT FNwin_cmd("dir")
>
Note that, as opposed to OSCLI itself, the command is always passed to Windows. In the second example above, the Windows DIR command is executed, which will result in a directory listing appearing in a DOS command box before quickly disappearing.