Automatically answer to input prompt in windows batch

Question

In a windows batch, I want to start a program that prompts the user for an input:

>someProgram.exe
> \"Please enter \"s\" to start the program:
> 
         


        

Answer 1

You can automate the user input prompt using VBScript and then write command to run VBScript in the batch script.

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run "command_that_asks_for prompt", 9 
WScript.Sleep 500 

'Msg is first prompt answer
Dim Msg: Msg = WshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%DB_TYPE%" )

'send character by character using for loop for first input prompt
For i = 1 To Len(Msg)
WScript.Sleep 200
WshShell.SendKeys Mid(Msg, i, 1)
Next

WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

'Msg2 is second input prompt answer
Msg2 = WshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings( "%CONNECTION_TYPE%" )


' send character by character for second input prompt
For i = 1 To Len(Msg2)
   WScript.Sleep 200
   WshShell.SendKeys Mid(Msg2, i, 1)
Next

WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

The above code is the example to provide the answer for 2 user input prompts. Similarly, we can provide for multiple prompts. Here I'm trying to provide environmental variables as an answer to the input prompts. The above code can be saved as filename.vbs and then write the command to VBScript in a batch script.

For example:

@echo off
'command to run VBScript
filename.vbs
pause

This can be used as the batch script to answer the input prompts automatically.