Todo.txt scripts
I’ve been spending a bit of time at LifeHacker recently, there is some pretty good tips over there (it’s where I found the PointUI for windows mobile 6). 
One of the posts I came across was this http://lifehacker.com/347269/lifehackers-exclusive-line-of-productivity-software. The Todo.sh command line tool caught my eye, as I always have a todo.txt hanging around on my desktop, or often a ‘todo list’ email languishing in my inbox.
Baulking at the idea of installing Cygwin to get a bash shell and getting to grips with ‘another’ scripting tool / language, I decided to port it to plain old VBScript.
The first thing was to set the systems default scripting host to cscript instead of wscript (wscript directs all input/output to windows instead of the command line). To do this simply open a command prompt and enter :
cscript //h:cscript //s (NOTE: to change back simply use cscript //h:wscript //s)
Then there is a whole bunch of code around parsing of the command line arguments and manipulation of text files – simple stuff really. There are two aspects not implemented in this version.
- Output colouring (the standard windows command line does not support this
- The ‘list’ output does not sort the entries alphabetically (I may get around to this later…)
It follows most of the features of the original (see the todo.sh details here), in the example displayed todo.vbs has been shortened to t.vbs and you can shorten the ‘actions’ (optionally list becomes l, add becomes a, replace becomes rep, append becomes app, prioritize becomes pri, archive becomes arc and do becomes d – it’s all clearly visible from the script source)
The script source is attached to this post, feel free to use / modify / ping me with questions…
GEO 51.4043197631836:-1.28760504722595