Default alias for nircmd

[alias]

Is there a trick for getting the default alias for nircmd to work?  Sorry for the newbie questions, but I'm a newbie...

AWESOME utility, btw!!!  I've only been using it for an hour or two and other utilities are getting uninstalled one by one, as I discover how much better FARR can replace their functionality...

[mouser]

can you elaborate a little on what you are trying and what's not working.

[alias]

Sure.  (I'm on W7, btw, in case that has anything to do with it...)

If I open a command prompt, I have no trouble running nircmd from anywhere, so I'm sure it's in my PATH, but if I open FARR (I'm using Alt-Space) and type 'cmd ', all I get are file hits.  For example, the first hit is a file called 'vimcmds.txt' which is a cheat sheet I keep of Vim commands I want to remember.

[mouser]

sounds like you just need to install the nircmd alias pack:
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=9365.0

[alias]

Ok- I assumed that, since the help file said it's a default alias, I didn't need to do anything else.  At any rate, I installed the alias pack, and tried the mute and unmute aliases, but they don't seem to do anything.

[mouser]

i guess first step is to see if ANY of the nircmd aliases work -- try screensaver start.
if not, then something else is wrong.

[alias]

Ok, got it:  Screensaver didn't work, either, so I looked at the alias and it has the %Aliasdir% hardcoded into the path, so it has to be there, too - it won't find it on the System Environment variable path...

That's a little unfortunate, because the version that comes in the pack is very old and crashes under W7.  But it works fine after copying the new version into the FARR/.../nircmd directory.

Thanks!

[mouser]

you could also manually edit the alias file, it's just a plaintext xml file -- and change the path to nircmd.

[alias]

That makes more sense, and avoids a proliferation of exe's - thanks!

[dpupello]

Mouser, okay I'm a loser, but how would you add a custom alias to myaliases.alias for the following nircmd.exe command with arguments?

nircmd.exe cdrom open d:

I tried the following, but no go:

OpenCD | %ALIASDIR%nircmd.exe cdrom d:
or
OpenCD | %ALIASDIR%nircmd.exe $$1 $$2

(Installed the Nircmd alias pack already and that is working fine with the included aliases).

What is the format or correct command here?  Thanks for feedback.

By the way, I figured out how to do this in an alternate way (with a shortcut utilizing those arguments), but I'd prefer to know how to add my own aliases inside of FARR (with either hard-coded arguments, or "replacement" arguments).  Thanx!

[mouser]

nothing "loser" about it.  i suspect that your problem is that you are using %ALIASDIR% to locate the nircmd.exe but your myaliases.alias is not in same directory as the nircmd subdir

so i think instead of:
OpenCD | %ALIASDIR%nircmd.exe cdrom d:
you would use:
OpenCD | %APPDIR%\AliasGroups\Installed\nircmd\nircmd.exe cdrom d:
or would it be
OpenCD | %APPDIR%AliasGroups\Installed\nircmd\nircmd.exe cdrom d:


something like that

[dpupello]

Mouser, thanks for the reply, and I get what you're telling me.

Interesting.  I couldn't get it to work using the %APPDIR% or %ALIASDIR% variables (even though it's apparently pointing directly at nircmd.exe), but once I pointed at where nircmd was in the path, %windir%\nircmd.exe, then it worked.  Perhaps nircmd has trouble fulfilling arguments unless it's positioned in the path, or FARR is not setting the nircmd "default folder", or something akin to that...  just shooting in the dark

Anyway, in the words of Inspector Clouseau, the problem is solv-ed.

Cheers.

[mouser]

also it might be FARRDIR instead of APPDIR.. i have been notoriously inconsistent with such things in some of my software (thankfully i have changed my ways since then but FARR still suffers from some of these inconsistencies).

anyway, glad you got it working!

[wjamoe]

not finding the command might also be caused by spaces in the path %ALIASDIR%, it toook me a while to resolve this one

so don't forget to put quotes around the command if any of the applicable path environment variables contains one or more spaces

replacing
OpenCD | %ALIASDIR%nircmd.exe cdrom d:
by
OpenCD | "%ALIASDIR%nircmd.exe" cdrom d:
worked for me

wiem