Custom Command options "Show Results as message" and "Ignore

Advertisement

LordRegent
Guest

Custom Command options "Show Results as message" and "Ignore

For Custom Commands, an option to "Show Results as message" would be useful on pass/fail commands with simple but significant output; for the message box, set the Title to the Custom Command's Description, the Prompt (or Content) to the command's output, and show an "OK" button. I can envision commands that need something done in the Terminal if they fail, so also having a button to dismiss the message then open the Terminal window could be useful.

Rationale: For many simply commands I neither need nor want the overhead and delay of opening the full Terminal window, which is only going to be immediately closed.
One such command is my "Check PHP Syntax":
php -l "!" || true


It would also be good to include in https://winscp.net/eng/docs/ui_customcommand a tip that appending
|| true
to a remote command will suppress any non-zero Return Code from the command, which allows the output to be shown in the terminal without going through the "Error executing custom command ... Abort / Retry / Skip / Skip all / Help" dialog. This tip works on Custom Commands in existing versions of WinSCP, but perhaps a future release can give Custom Commands an option "Ignore Return Code" which would simply bypass this dialog.

Reply with quote

Advertisement

Guest

Re: Custom Command options "Show Results as message" and "Ignore

Differences between closing a Console window and message box:
    = non-responsive UI briefly while the Console window is instantiated
    = memory overhead for an otherwise unused Console window
    = mental focus shift due to the sudden appearance of a large dark rectangle
    = lack of fluidity for mouse; MsgBox is relatively nearby, not so the Close button
There is already code to make the response text "safe" to be put in a message prompt, because that is done with error output. There's already a custom message box handler which is used throughout the application. I just want to put the two together.

Reply with quote

LordRegent
Guest

Re: Custom Command options "Show Results as message" and "Ig

If I can find a command that will always throw a Return Code 255, I can put that at the end of the command chain with output pipe manipulation and thus force WinSCP to show me the command's output in a message box, to which I will respond "Abort" (unless I need to do something at the command line afterwards, in which case I will respond "Skip"). This is an inelegant and kludgy solution, but way better than a custom build.

I wonder if backticks around exit -1 would work?!

Reply with quote

LordRegent
Guest

Re: Custom Command options "Show Results as message" and "Ig

Here's a kludge to check PHP Syntax and see the results in a message box:

php -l "!" 1>&2 && `exit -1`

If you then want to do something at the command prompt, click Skip otherwise click Abort.

Reply with quote

Advertisement

Advertisement

You can post new topics in this forum