July 2012 | The Old New Thing

Reading the output of a command into a batch file variable

Raymond ChenJuly 31, 2012Jul 31, 201207/31/12

It's Day Two of Batch File Week. Don't worry, it'll be over in a few days. There is no obvious way to read the output of a command into a batch file variable. In unix-style shells, this is done via backquoting. The Windows command processor does not have direct backquoting, but you can fake it by abusing the FOR command. Here's the evolu

Raymond's subjective, unfair, and completely wrong impressions of the opening ceremonies of a major athletic event which took place recently

Raymond ChenJuly 30, 2012Jul 30, 201207/30/12

Like many other people, I watched the opening ceremonies of a major athletic event which took place a few days ago. (The organization responsible for the event has taken the step of blocking the mention of the name of the city hosting the event and the year the event takes place, or the name of the event itself except in editorial news piece

Why don't any commands work after I run my batch file? I'm told that they are not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file.

Raymond ChenJuly 30, 2012Jul 30, 201207/30/12

I sort of forgot to celebrate CLR Week last year, so let's say that CLR week is "on hiatus" until next year. To fill the summertime time slot, I'm going to burn off a busted pilot: This week is Batch File Week 2012. Remember, nobody actually enjoys batch programming. It's just something you have to put up with in order to get something done.

Psychic debugging: Why your IContextMenu::InvokeCommand never gets called

Raymond ChenJuly 27, 2012Jul 27, 201207/27/12

A customer reported a problem with their shell context menu extension. I have implemented the IContextMenu shell extension, but when the user selects my custom menu item, my IContextMenu::InvokeCommand is never called. Can anyone please let me know what the problem could be and how to fix it? Since there really isn't much inf

A brief and also incomplete history of Windows localization

Raymond ChenJuly 26, 2012Jul 26, 201207/26/12

The process by which Windows has been localized has changed over the years. Back in the days of 16-bit Windows, Windows was developed with a single target language: English. Just English. After Windows was complete and masters were sent off to the factory for duplication, the development team handed the source code over to the localization

One way to make sure you pass an array of the correct size

Raymond ChenJuly 25, 2012Jul 25, 201207/25/12

Another entry in the very sporadic series of "very strange code I've seen." The code has been changed to protect the guilty, but the essence has been preserved.

Taking flexitarianism to another, perhaps unintended, level

Raymond ChenJuly 24, 2012Jul 24, 201207/24/12

Our cafeteria has been trying to encourage flexitarianism, which it defines as eating one meat-free meal per week. But in their effort to make the concept more appealing, they may have lost sight of the goal. (The "Vegetarian Option" magnet was probably intended for the Asparagus, Mushroom and Spinach Pizette just above it.) One of my colle

What's the story behind the WM_SYNCPAINT message?

Raymond ChenJuly 23, 2012Jul 23, 201207/23/12

Danail wants to know the story behind the WM_SYNCPAINT message. The documentation pretty much tells the story. When a window has been hidden, shown, moved or sized, the system may determine that it needs to send a WM_SYNCPAINT message to the windows of other threads. This message must be passed to DefWindowProc, which wi

The format of icon resources

Raymond ChenJuly 20, 2012Jul 20, 201207/20/12

It's been a long time since my last entry in the continuing sporadic series on resources formats. Today we'll look at icons. Recall that an icon file consists of two parts, an icon directory (consisting of an icon directory header followed by a number of icon directory entries), and then the icon images themselves. When an icon is stored

Why do some font names begin with an at-sign?

Raymond ChenJuly 19, 2012Jul 19, 201207/19/12

It was a simple question. For some reason, my font selection dialog (CFontDialog) shows a bunch of font names beginning with the at-sign (@). These fonts don't work correctly if I use them. Any idea what they are? (I tried searching the Internet, but search engines don't seem to let you search for @ so it's hard to make much headway

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