Using VB to send keyboard input to an MS-DOS program

[madhatter22]

Hello,

I am on Windows XP, and I am trying to use VB scripts to send keyboard input to an MS-DOS program. The problem is that through some weird bug in the MS-DOS program, it is only able to accept a character every 500 ms. It has no interface for automation, so I am trying to get Windows to send keys to the program for me.

Here is an example of a script that successfully sends input into internet explorer:

Set shell = WScript.CreateObject ("WScript.Shell")

appName = "iexplore.exe"

Sub giveItAKeystroke (keystrokes, name)
	shell.AppActivate name
	shell.SendKeys keystrokes
End Sub

WScript.Sleep 500
shell.Run appName
WScript.Sleep 3000

Call giveItAKeystroke ("Hello World!", appName)

This technique pretty much works for any applications EXCEPT MS-DOS. How does one send input to an MS-DOS program? I've searched the web, but I have found few satisfying answers. One way is to send it input from a text file by calling a batch file That is, my script would include something like

 shell.Run "supporting.bat"

and then the batch file would have

 msDosProg.exe < textFileWithInput.txt

The problem with this is that it feeds in everything in the text file at once, and my program only accepts one character every 0.5 seconds.

I could have a text file for every character, but this won't work because doing msDosProg.exe < textFileWithInput.txt starts a new instance of msDosProg.exe, and I need all the input to be put into a single instance.

[dglienna]

Using API's you might be able to do it. Check out this article that I reviewed. I've used it to send keys to a Java program. I had a 50ms timer between keys. Oddly enough, I needed a VB.Tab to click the submit button.

http://www.codeguru.com/vb/gen/vb_sy...le.php/c14629/