Columbia Kermit/kermit.zip/newsgroups/misc.19980901-19981211/000237_news@newsmaster….columbia.edu _Wed Oct 28 17:00:08 1998.msg

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From: [e-mail] (Frank da Cruz)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kermit.misc
Subject: Re: sending variables on the command line
Date: 28 Oct 1998 22:00:06 GMT
Organization: Columbia University
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References: <71810c$31v$[e-mail]>
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Xref: news.columbia.edu comp.protocols.kermit.misc:9437

In article <71810c$31v$[e-mail]>, Michael Rose <[e-mail]> wrote:
: I have a script that I would like to send variables from the command prompt.
:
: kermit  script-name  variable1  variable2  variable3 variable4
:
Let's assume you are talking about C-Kermit 6.0.

: $kermit maillogs 10.2.2.14 joebloe joepasswd maillog
:
This can't work because "10.2.2.14", "joebloe", "joepasswd", and "maillog"
are not valid C-Kermit command-line arguments.

: Any help would be greatly appreciated.
:
The trick that you are looking for is documented, somewhat obscurely,
on pages 353, 383, 469, and 513 of "Using C-Kermit", 2nd edition:

 1. If you put an "=" sign (surrounded by whitespace) on the command line,
    the following words are ignored, but still assigned to the argument
    vector array, \&@[].

 2. You can use a FOR loop to loop through the argument vector array
    elements until you find the one whose value is "=".

 3. The ones after that are your variables.

Example:

  $kermit maillogs = 10.2.2.14 joebloe joepasswd maillog

(note insertion of "=" sign)

The maillogs script can retrieve the arguments as follows:

  local \%i \%k
  for \%i 0 \v(args)-1 1 {
      xif equal "\&@[\%k]" "=" {
          assign \%k \%i
          increment \%k
          break
      }
  }

At this point, if \%k is defined, it is the index of your first variable:

  \&@[\%k]   is 10.2.2.14
  \&@[\%k+1] is joebloe
  \&@[\%k+2] is joepasswd
  \&@[\%k+3] is joepasswd
  \&@[\%k+4] is maillog

Granted, this is obscure, nonintuitive, and cryptic.  The next version
of C-Kermit will include a much better way to access these variables:
within the script, you will be able to refer to these variables like this:

  \%0 = the name of the script file   (maillogs)
  \%1 = the first argument after "="  (10.2.2.14)
  \%2 = the second argument after "=" (joeblow)

and so on.  (This feature is not in C-Kermit 6.1 Beta.05; it will be in
7.0 Alpha.01 and in the next release of K-95 -- watch this space for
announcements.)

By the way, the reason for the "=" is to allow a mixture of arguments to
Kermit and arguments to the script on the same command line.  Thus, both
examples above would work just as well if your command line was:

  $kermit maillogs -i -Q -Y -H = 10.2.2.14 joebloe joepasswd maillog

And finally, note that you can remove the word "kermit" from the command line
if you first:

  chmod +x maillogs

and put:

  #!/usr/local/bin/kermit

as the first line (substitute the actual pathname of the Kermit executable).

Now you can just run the script as if it were a shell script (except that
you still need the "=" to precede the argument list):

  $maillogs = 10.2.2.14 joebloe joepasswd maillog

See p.513 for details.

- Frank