Programmatically send key strokes to a window program in Groovy or bat script

Question

Backstory: I need to programmatically find the differences between two files. I want to use WinMerge to generate a report (Tools -> Generate Report) that I can parse to ge

Answer 1

Here is a powershell example to activate winmerge and send some keys.

EDIT: Reduced copy pasta with some .NET variables. $SK = Sendkeys $AA = AppActivate $LRA = Reflect .NET.

$startapp = "C:\DevTools\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe"
ii $startapp
$SK = "[System.Windows.Forms.SendKeys]::SendWait"
$AA = "[Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction]::AppActivate"
$LRA = "[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName"
Start-Sleep 1
$LRA+'("Microsoft.VisualBasic")'
$AA+'("WinMerge")'
Start-Sleep -m 100
$LRA+'("System.Windows.Forms")'
Start-Sleep -m 100
$SK+'("%F")'
$SK+'("o")'
$SK+'("{ENTER}")'
$SK+'("%T")'
$SK+'("r")'
Start-Sleep 1
$AA+'("Save As")'
Start-Sleep 1
$SK+'("Diff.txt")'
$SK+'("{ENTER}")'

To encapsulate this in a command window, save it to a file PowerShellScript.ps1: Note, changed the command syntax a bit, should work if you use the & {.\dot\source\path}

start /b /wait powershell.exe  -nologo -WindowStyle Hidden -sta -Command "& {.\PowerShellScript.ps1}"