AT command invokation in non-English systems

[Romulo A. Ceccon]

Hi,

I'm trying to schedule a periodical job using the AT command but can't
get it work. I'm using the *Brazilian portuguese* version of Windows
2000 Professional *and* Windows 2000 Server. Probably the same problem
exists with other languages.

The job should execute on specific days in the week (say, on Wednesday
and on Friday). So, for instance, to run cmd on these days at midnight
I'd invoke:

at 0:00 /every:W,F cmd

The "W" and "F" mnemonic strings are according to the documentation on
http://tinyurl.com/3r7vp (short for
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/standa
rd/proddocs/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2
003/standard/proddocs/en-us/at.asp). They don't work in my computer.
After a lot of time trying to guess what the correct strings are in
portuguese I ended with the following equivalence table:

English | Portuguese
Weekday name AT string | Weekday name AT string (1) AT string (2)
Sunday Su | Domingo do Dom
Monday M | Segunda se Seg
Tuesday T | Terça te Ter
Wednesday W | Quarta qa Qua
Thursday Tu | Quinta qi Qui
Friday F | Sexta ? (3) Sex
Saturday S | Sábado sá (4) Sáb

Well, the lists consist of the documented AT mnemonics in English and
the "discovered" mnemonics in Portuguese. In the first column of each
section you see the weekday name, just for reference. Now, read the
notes:

(1) These are the mnemonics that really work (otherwise I get a message
telling I used an invalid option)
(2) These are the mnemonics documented in the Windows' local help (none
of them works)
(3) I could not find the correct mnemonic for Friday until this point
(4) Yes, the accent is required (it's not my mistake)

Afterwards I decided to write a program that uses the NetScheduleJobAdd
API to schedule a task each Friday so I could invoke the AT command
without parameters and see what is its mnemonic for Friday in
Portuguese (the AT output shows the same mnemonic it uses for input).

And what's the surprise? The mnemonic for Friday is "se", the same for
Monday! So, how the hell does AT think we should write it to get it
work? I guess that's a bug introduced by the translation guys. Or am I
missing something? Has any of you already had this experience? Is there
some known workaround (other than using the API or the graphical task
scheduler)?

Many thanks in advance,

 

[KayZer Soze]

You can't use the GUI Task Scheduler for this particular problem?
I never use translated OS as possible to avoid problems like that...

 

[Michael Bednarek]

[snip]

And what's the surprise? The mnemonic for Friday is "se", the same for
Monday! So, how the hell does AT think we should write it to get it
work? I guess that's a bug introduced by the translation guys. Or am I
missing something? Has any of you already had this experience? Is there
some known workaround (other than using the API or the graphical task
scheduler)?

Many thanks in advance,

You could try JT.EXE (which used to be available from the NT Resource
Kit at <ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/reskit/win2000/>) which can create and
manipulate .job files. It's not easy to use. Jerold Schulman's tip 2621
<http://www.jsiinc.com/subf/tip2600/rh2621.htm> might help a bit.

Apparently, JT.EXE uses these single letters for the English days of the
week Sunday-Saturday: UMTWRFA; maybe they use a similar scheme in
Portuguese, or may be it's not localized and it uses English as well.