I am using Dragon Medical 10.0.  I have many very small executable files created with another scripting program that I would like to be able to run sequentially from within one dragon script.  What is the most efficient way to launch the executable and then have the script wait until it successfully completes before proceeding with the rest of the script?  I appreciate any help or suggestions of resources that I may wish to explore.

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Dragon Medical 10.0, XP pro sp2, Motion J3400 tablet, dual-core 1.4, 3mb L2 cache, BW900 Bluetooth with Anycom USB bluetooth dongle.

One way to do this would be to have the scripts written with the other program display some sort of window when they are done.  Then you could use the WaitforWindow technique.  If you'll search this forum, you will see examples of using the WaitforWindow coding.

Of course, you could always just use a timed wait period, but that doesn't seem very interesting or efficient. 

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I found another solution on a blog that involves writing a function that waits for the executable to finish:

 

http://www.mjtnet.com/blog/2009/06/04/calling-macro-scheduler-scripts-from-vbvba/

 

1.     Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" ( _  
2.         ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)  
3.     Private Declare Function GetExitCodeProcess Lib "kernel32" ( _  
4.         ByVal hProcess As Long, ByVal lpExitCode As Long) As Long  
5.     Private Declare Function timeGetTime Lib "winmm.dll" () As Long  
6.     Private Declare Function OpenProcess Lib "kernel32" ( _  
7.         ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, ByVal bInheritHandle As Long, ByVal dwProcessId As Long) As Long  
8.     Private Const STILL_ACTIVE = &H103  
9.     Private Const PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION = &H400  
10.     Private Declare Function CloseHandle Lib "kernel32" ( _  
11.         ByVal hObject As Long) As Long  
12.   
13.     Public Function ShellAndWait( _  
14.      ByVal sShell As String, _  
15.             Optional ByVal eWindowStyle As Integer = vbNormalFocus, _  
16.             Optional ByRef sError As String = "", _  
17.             Optional ByVal lTimeOut As Long = 2000000000 _  
18.          As Boolean  
19.         Dim hProcess As Long  
20.         Dim lR As Long  
21.         Dim lTimeStart As Long  
22.         Dim bSuccess As Boolean  
23.   
24.         On Error GoTo ShellAndWaitError  
25.   
26.         ' This is v2 which is somewhat more reliable:  
27.         hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION, False, Shell(sShell, eWindowStyle))  
28.         If (hProcess = 0) Then  
29.             sError = "This program could not determine whether the process started." & _  
30.                  "Please watch the program and check it completes."  
31.             ' Only fail if there is an error - this can happen  
32.             ' when the program completes too quickly.  
33.         Else  
34.             bSuccess = True  
35.             lTimeStart = timeGetTime()  
36.             Do  
37.                 ' Get the status of the process  
38.                 GetExitCodeProcess(hProcess, lR)  
39.                 ' Sleep during wait to ensure the other process gets  
40.                 ' processor slice:  
41. DoEvents:       Sleep(100)  
42.                 If (timeGetTime() - lTimeStart > lTimeOut) Then  
43.                     ' Too long!  
44.                     sError = "The process has timed out."  
45.                     lR = 0  
46.                     bSuccess = False  
47.                 End If  
48.             Loop While lR = STILL_ACTIVE  
49.         End If  
50.         ShellAndWait = bSuccess  
51.   
52.         Exit Function  
53.   
54. ShellAndWaitError:  
55.         sError = Err.Description  
56.         Exit Function  
57.     End Function 
    

 

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Dragon Medical 10.0, XP pro sp2, Motion J3400 tablet, dual-core 1.4, 3mb L2 cache, BW900 Bluetooth with Anycom USB bluetooth dongle.

Cool! thanks for sharing!


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