How to Write File Contents to Screen

Keywords:     display

---

Question:

I use a file I named, ExtractLines.WBT, to search for strings in my database and write the lines found to a new file. I then view the new file in Notepad. The program works fine and serves me well.

Is there a way to write the lines directly to the screen from within the winbatch file? Or write to the clipboard or a temporary file and then show on screen directly from the WinBatch program?

Answer:

There are many ways to do what you want. Here are some notes:

• For the easiest, with minimal change to your program, use the AskFileText function to display the data. Add the following line to the end of your script...

  	AskFileText("Matching Lines",target,@unsorted,@single)
  

  You can resize the outside dimensions of the AskFileText with the WinPlace function, but there is no way to increase the inside dimensions of the width of the file contents display box. You can change the font used in the box with the IntControl(28,,1,0,0,0) function.

• You could use the BoxOpen and BoxText commands to display it on the screen as you go. See the WinBatch manual (the small one) or the WinBatch.hlp file for info on the Box commands.

• Using binary operations instead of the File operations would make it faster.

• On a slightly different topic, you could investigate our "Searcher" extender which can do rapid searches of entire hard drives for data in files. But it does not show you the line with the data on it.

• You may wish to use "AskFileName" at the top of your script to help you locate the file instead of your three askxxx boxes.

Here is a file and a binary example:

;display the contents of a file
testfile1=FileLocate("win.ini")
old = FileOpen(testfile1, "READ")
msg="" 
  while @TRUE             ; Loop till break do us end
        line=fileread(old)
        If Line == "*EOF*" Then Break
        msg=strcat(msg,line,@CRLF)
  endwhile
FileClose(old)
display(5,"Filetext" ,msg)

;Binary example (runs much faster)
fs=FileSize("C:\WINDOWS\WIN.INI")
binbuf = BinaryAlloc(fs+100)
if binbuf == 0
        Message("Error", "BinaryAlloc Failed")
else
        BinaryRead(binbuf, "C:\WINDOWS\WIN.INI")
        maxlen=min(binaryEODget(binbuf),30000)
        text=Binarypeekstr(binbuf,0,maxlen)
        binbuf=BinaryFree(binbuf)
endif
display(5, "", text)

---

Article ID:   W13231

Filename:   Display - Write File Contents to Screen.txt