NetPrinters

Copyright © 2008 Daniel Collins
Website: http://www.solemnwarning.net/netprinters/

NetPrinters is a utility for managing networked printer connections on Windows workstations running Windows 2000 or newer. It can be passed printers via the command line, or in a NetPrinters script which allows setting up printers based on filters such as username and hostname.

Command line options

• -a
  Print "about" message.
• -e
  Print environment information (username, hostname, etc)
• -c \\SERVER\PrinterName
  Add printer connection to specified SMB printer.
• -d \\SERVER\PrinterName
  Set default printer to specified SMB printer.
• -r Expression
  Remove all printer connections matching the supplied expression.
• -l
  List connected printers.
• -s Filename
  Execute a NetPrinters script.

Script format

NetPrinters scripts are made from "blocks" of code, blocks of code contain control and filter directives, the control directives of a block are executed in order until a filter statement that evaluates false is encountered, then the rest of the block is skipped.

Blocks of code are seperated by one or more blank lines, lines beginning with a hash (#) symbol are ignored as comments, but they will not act as block seperators.

Control directives

• AddPrinter \\SERVER\PrinterName
  Add printer connection to an SMB printer.
• DefaultPrinter \\SERVER\PrinterName
  Set default printer to specified SMB printer.
• DeletePrinter \\SERVER\PrinterName
  Delete any printer connections matching the supplied expression, the printer expression may make use of the * and ? wildcards to represent zero or more of any character, or any one character respectively.

Filter directives

• NetBIOS NetBIOS name
  Evaluates true if the system NetBIOS name matches the supplied NetBIOS name, the supplied name may use the * and ? wildcards, which have the same effect as documented in DeletePrinter.
• !NetBIOS NetBIOS name
  Evaluates true is the system NetBIOS name does NOT match the supplied NetBIOS name, basically the opposite of the NetBIOS directive. May also use the * and ? wildcards like NetBIOS can.
• Username Username expression
  Evaluates true if the current username matches the supplied username expression, the supplied username expression may use the * and ? wildcards.
• !Username Username expression
  Evaluates true if the current username does NOT match the supplied username expression, the supplied username expression may use the * and ? wildcards.