When you execute a program "foo" with spawnProcess, it will find "foo.exe" if it is a file in the PATH environment variable. However, it will not find programs with the ".bat" extension.
When searching for a program in PATH on windows, all files with an extension from the PATHEXT environment variable should be checked, i.e.
PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
I've created a small program to demonstrate/reproduce this issue:
import std.file, std.process, std.stdio;
void main(string[] args)
{
if (args.length == 1)
runTest();
else
writeln("running from an exe!");
}
void runTest()
{
const runDir = "C:\\temp\\testworkdir";
const pathDir = "C:\\temp\\testpathdir";
if (!exists(runDir)) mkdir(runDir);
if (!exists(pathDir)) mkdir(pathDir);
chdir(runDir);
const thisExe = thisExePath();
writefln("thisExePath is '%s'", thisExe);
const tempExe = pathDir ~ "\\anexeprogram.exe";
std.file.copy(thisExe, tempExe);
environment["PATH"] = environment["PATH"] ~ ";" ~ pathDir;
writefln("Added '%s' to path", pathDir);
run(["anexeprogram", "recursive"]); // works
const tempBat = pathDir ~ "\\abatprogram.bat";
{
auto batFile = File(tempBat, "w");
batFile.writeln("@echo running from a bat file");
}
run(["abatprogram.bat"]); // works
run(["abatprogram"]); // FAILS
writefln("Success!");
}
void run(string[] args)
{
writefln("Running %s", args);
auto p = spawnProcess(args);
assert(0 == wait(p));
}
Comment #1 by torhu — 2022-10-31T01:45:21Z
Since batch files are not executables, but interpreted by cmd.exe, you need to use spawnShell instead.
Or are you suggesting that files with extensions in PATHEXT should be treated in a similar way to Linux shell scripts with shebang lines in them? It's a bit messy to implement that. The Windows ShellExecuteW function will run non-executables, but it doesn't allow you to set environment variables. So it's not a generic replacement for CreateProcessW.
Comment #2 by torhu — 2022-10-31T03:20:59Z
Nevermind, I see what you mean now. spawnProcess will run batch files, but it won't find them unless the .bat extension is included.
Comment #3 by robert.schadek — 2024-12-01T16:36:18Z