VBA Get cmd screen info from shell program

Access2013Programmer · September 28th, 2016, 04:36 PM

Access 2013

I have a program test.exe that when run in a command window displays to that window some information about a file.

below is what I see if I run test --info "c:\test\testfile.jpg" in the command window

C:\test>test --info "c:\test\testfile.jpg"
Info about testfile.jpg:
size: x=9.240 y=4.450 z=12.000
number of colors: 792
number of shells: 1
volume: 124.301

I have tried:

x = Shell("C:\test\test --info c:\test\testfile.jpg", 0)

MsgBox x

but each time I run it I get a different number and it's never any part of the display info.

How can I run this (DOS Command only program) and get the results in a VBA string variable?

BTW the program has no option to save the info to a file just displays it in the command window.

HiTechCoach · January 30th, 2017, 09:22 PM

You should be able to redirect the output to file and the read it with VBA. I do this with several command line tools.

See: Using command redirection operators

1) Generate the output file:

Example:

Code:

Dim OutPutFile as String

OutputFile = "C:\Test\info.txt"

x = Shell("C:\test\test --info c:\test\testfile.jpg >  " & OutputFile, 0)

2) Read the file stored in the variable OutputFile

There are several ways to read in the contents of the Text file.

I like to use:

Code:

Line Input # Statement

You can find examples in the Help File for Access.