What's this character?

[vefatica]

It's the same with ANSI on or off. After redirection to a file or piping to LIST /X or VIEW /X it is a '?' (ASCII 63). Whatever it is, I can't imagine what NET TIME is trying to do.

 

[Charles Dye]

echo %@ascii[
... then highlight the string in question, copy and paste it in, type your closing bracket, and hit Enter.

 

[vefatica]

It's a question mark (63).

v:\> echo %@ascii[Current time at \\jj is ?2019-?09-?17 13:57:44]
67 117 114 114 101 110 116 32 116 105 109 101 32 97 116 32 92 92 106 106 32 105 115 32 63 50 48 49 57 45 63 48 57 45 63 49 55 32 49 51 58 53 55 58 52 52

If I "do forever ( echo %_curchar & delay 1 )" (_CURCHAR is a plugin which uses ReadConsoleOutputCharacter) and hover on it, it's still a question mark.

 

[Steve Pitts]

Vince,

Standalone TCC or TCMD? Unicode output turned on or not? Which OS? What does 'which net' tell you is getting executed?

Output from net time looks perfectly normal here on both Windows 8.1 (with v20 of TCMD) and Windows 10 (with v25) in either TCMD or TCC.

 

[vefatica]

Standalone TCC v25, Unicode output no, Win10 1903, C:\WINDOWS\system32\net.EXE.

 

[vefatica]

Here's a better look at it.

I can't find it with CHARMAP under Consolas.

 

[ben]

It's U+200E - left-to-right mark.

(I copied the text from the console into my editor (TextPad, which I believe Vince also uses) and examined it there.)

TCC 20.11.46 x64 Windows 10 [Version 6.3.18362]

 

[Steve Pitts]

Vince,

The only obvious difference between your environment and one of mine was the Windows 10 version (I upgraded from Windows 7 a couple of days ago and the update cycle had only got to 1803 by yesterday evening, whilst 1903 was installed last night) and since the 1903 update I see the same output but only in some contexts?!

When run in TCC running under Take Command (with Unicode output off) I see the output unsullied (although I do see a strange artefact on the right hand end of the output line - three white squares, where my background colour is black). Running in a standalone TCC (with Unicode off and Raster font) I see a question mark whereas with (say) Consolas I see the right facing arrow but with some other fonts I see an empty square or a small dot (presumably representing the fact that there isn't a character in that position in the font). Both Powershell and CMD show the same, depending on font.

Weird.

 

[vefatica]

Yes. I also discovered what it was (and neglected to push "Post reply"). And, as you said, Steve, it depends on the font. Other fonts give a more typical representation of an "unprintable" character. The programmer can choose a default character when converting Unicode to Ascii (which may be happening). That one is an odd choice. And what's an extra character doing there in the first place?

I also see the same oddball artefact in TCMD.

 

[AnrDaemon]

Check your locale settings (Control panel - Language and locale).

 

[vefatica]

Check your locale settings (Control panel - Language and locale).

The closest thing in my Control Panel is "Region". Check it for what?

 

[Rodolfo]

What is the character that You use use date separator?
If You use date/time commands, what do You see?
And if You use net time/date/time from cmd?

Regards

Rodolfo Giovanninetti

 

[w_krieger]

In ansi escapes, that would be the escape-character 0x1B or something.

[d:\]net time \\penning
Current time at \\penning is 22/09/2019 23:19:27

The command completed successfully.

I would check the Locale settings, to see if anything amiss is there.