Get values from .exe programm in "stdout"

[Jean]

Hi,

Please help me as I am a newbie in VB, pretty much in all programming.
I searched many forums before, but do not know exactly what keywords to
use. I hope my question makes sense.

I have the following Sub, which calls an .exe program.

Code:
Private Sub cmdCalc_Click()
On Error GoTo Err_cmdCalc_Click

Dim stAppName As String
Dim stArgument As String

stAppName = "C:\Program Files\prog.exe"
stArgument = " " & Me.cboAge& " " & Me.cboSex
Call Shell(stAppName & stArgument, 1)

Exit_Calc_Click:
Exit Sub

Err_cmdCalc_Click:
MsgBox Err.Description
Resume Exit_cmdCalc_Click

End Sub
Now what I need, is for the value which is returned by the .exe program
to be captured by Visual Basic. I normally run this program in the
command prompt, with the arguments, and when pressing Enter, the answer
is displayed on the following line in the command prompt.

Does this involve reading the stream "stdout". If yes, how do I do it
in Access VB?

Regards,
J

[MGFoster]

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Hash: SHA1

There's probably another way to do this, but, what I do is redirect the
output of the called program to a text file. Then use VBA to read the
file. So your code would look like this:

stAppName = "C:\Program Files\prog.exe"
stArgument = " " & Me.cboAge& " " & Me.cboSex & _
" >> c:\filename.txt"
Call Shell(stAppName & stArgument, 1)

Sometimes the called program takes a while to complete. In that case
you have to wait before getting the results from the text file. There
are Shell Wait variations of the Shell function. See this site

http://www.mvps.org/access/api/api0004.htm

--
MGFoster:::mgf00 <at> earthlink <decimal-point> net
Oakland, CA (USA)

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Jean wrote:

Hi,

Please help me as I am a newbie in VB, pretty much in all programming.
I searched many forums before, but do not know exactly what keywords to
use. I hope my question makes sense.

I have the following Sub, which calls an .exe program.

Code:
Private Sub cmdCalc_Click()
On Error GoTo Err_cmdCalc_Click

Dim stAppName As String
Dim stArgument As String

stAppName = "C:\Program Files\prog.exe"
stArgument = " " & Me.cboAge& " " & Me.cboSex
Call Shell(stAppName & stArgument, 1)

Exit_Calc_Click:
Exit Sub

Err_cmdCalc_Click:
MsgBox Err.Description
Resume Exit_cmdCalc_Click

End Sub
Now what I need, is for the value which is returned by the .exe program
to be captured by Visual Basic. I normally run this program in the
command prompt, with the arguments, and when pressing Enter, the answer
is displayed on the following line in the command prompt.

Does this involve reading the stream "stdout". If yes, how do I do it
in Access VB?

[Jean]

Thanks for the reply

I have tried this, but it does not work!

Strange thing is, when I copy the "Pathname" variable of the Shell
function (i.e. C:\Progra~1\Prog.exe 29 Male >> c:\temp\File1.txt ) and
paste it in the command prompt, the Text file is created! Only when
doing this through Access, it doesn't. Am I missing something here?

Here is the faulty line in Access VBA:

Code:
Call Shell("C:\Progra~1\Prog.exe 29 Male >> c:\temp\File1.txt", 1)

Thanks in advance!

[Jean]

I got another way of using this now, by doing the following, and it
works!

Shell Environ("comspec") & " /c " & [path to program and arguments
etc.]