Question

So I have this crazy idea to pass strings from an excel sheet into a command line tool, for a data integrity test.

Say I have a sheet set up as so:

  A        B        C        D         E
1 ID       First    Last     Position  IP

2 312      George   Foreman  CEO       999.22.3.1

3 443      Billy    Mays     Mailroom  999.12.5.2

4 243      Sugar    Ray      CFO       999.55.2.1
...
n 999      Betty    Crocker  Boss      999.21.0.1

Where the parameter I’d like to pass into my command line tool is E (IP).

I’d like to pass in my parameters in this form:

C:\User> Program.cmd IP

e.g.

C:\User> Program.cmd 999.55.2.1

What would be the best way to approach this problem? I’ve been trying to write a batch script, but I’m having trouble extracting the string I want. Should I just suck it up and do this in C# or Java, or is there a different way (I’m very curious because I can’t seem to find a paradigm for this, and I’d really like to learn more about batch).

Thank you!

Answer 1

I see no reason why you can’t write a macro that uses shell to call the exe. see http://dmcritchie.mvps.org/excel/shell.htm