• Introduction
• Python Regular Expressions
• GAM Configuration
• Meta Commands and File Redirection
• Definitions
• Batch files
• CSV files
• CSV files with redirection and select
• Automatic batch processing
• Process Google Sheet commands and save results

Batch and CSV file processing can improve performance by executing Gam commands in parallel. The variables num_threads, num_tbatch_threads and auto_batch_min in gam.cfg control parallelism.

• Command data from Google Docs/Sheets/Storage gdoc <UserGoogleDoc> and gsheet <UserGoogleSheet>

There are two types of batch processing, one that uses processes and one that uses threads. Using processes is higher performance but gam csv commands are not supported.

• gam batch - gam commands are run as processes, gam csv commands are not allowed in the batch file
• gam tbatch - gam commands are run as threads, gam csv commands are allowed in the batch file

gam batch <FileName>|-|(gdoc <UserGoogleDoc>) [charset <Charset>] [showcmds [<Boolean>]]
gam tbatch <FileName>|-|(gdoc <UserGoogleDoc>) [charset <Charset>] [showcmds [<Boolean>]]

• <FileName> - A flat file containing Gam commands
• - - Gam commands coming from stdin
• gdoc <UserGoogleDoc> - A Google Doc containing Gam commands
• showcmds - Write timestamp,command number/number of commands,command to stderr when each command starts; write timestamp, command number/numberof commands,complete to stderr when command completes

Batch files can contain the following types of lines:

• Blank lines - Ignored
• # Comment line - Ignored
• gam <GAMArgumentList> - Execute a GAM command
• commit-batch
  • GAM waits for all running GAM commands to complete
  • GAM continues
• commit-batch <String>
  • GAM waits for all running GAM commands to complete
  • GAM prints <String> and waits for the user to press any key
  • GAM continues
• sleep <Integer> - Batch processing will suspend for <Integer> seconds before the next command line is processed
  • To be effective, this should immediately follow commit-batch
• print <String> - Print <String> on stderr
• set <KeywordString> <ValueString>
  • Subsequent lines will have %<KeywordString>% replaced with <ValueString>
• clear <KeywordString>
  • Subsequent lines will not be scanned for %<KeywordString>%

Tbatch files can also contain the following line:

• execute <Program> <ArgumentList> - Execute an arbitrary command; use the full path to specify <Program>

• You need to create accounts for your new students and assign them to groups based on their graduation year.
• You have a CSV file NewStudents.csv with columns: Email,First,Last,GradYear,Password
• You have a batch file NewStudents.bat containing these commands:

gam csv NewStudents.csv gam create user "~Email" firstname "~First" lastname "~Last" org "/Students/~~GradYear~~" password "~Password"
commit-batch
gam update group seniors sync members ou /Students/2020
gam update group juniors sync members ou /Students/2021
gam update group sophomores sync members ou /Students/2022
gam update group highschool sync members ous "'/Students/2020','/Students/2021','/Students/2022'"

• Execute the batch file

gam redirect stdout ./NewStudents.out redirect stderr ./NewStudents.err tbatch NewStudents.bat showcmds

gam csv <FileName>|-|(gsheet <UserGoogleSheet>)|(gdoc <UserGoogleDoc>) [charset <Charset>] [warnifnodata]
        [columndelimiter <Character>] [noescapechar <Boolean>] [quotechar <Character>] [fields <FieldNameList>]
        (matchfield|skipfield <FieldName> <RegularExpression>)* [showcmds [<Boolean>]]
        [skiprows <Integer>] [maxrows <Integer>]
        gam <GAMArgumentList>

gam loop <FileName>|-|(gsheet <UserGoogleSheet>)|(gdoc <UserGoogleDoc>) [charset <Charset>] [warnifnodata]
        [columndelimiter <Character>] [noescapechar <Boolean>] [quotechar <Character>] [fields <FieldNameList>]
        (matchfield|skipfield <FieldName> <RegularExpression>)* [showcmds [<Boolean>]]
        [skiprows <Integer>] [maxrows <Integer>]
        gam <GAMArgumentList>

• gam csv - Use parallel processing
• gam loop - Use serial processing
• <FileName> - A CSV file and the one or more columns that contain data
• - - The one or more columns that contain data from stdin
• gsheet <UserGoogleSheet> - A Google Sheet and the one or more columns that contain data
• gdoc <UserGoogleDoc> - A Google Doc and the one or more columns that contain data
• columndelimiter <Character> - Columns are separated by <Character>; if not specified, the value of csv_input_column_delimiter from gam.cfg will be used
• noescapechar <Boolean> - Should \ be ignored as an escape character; if not specified, the value of csv_input_no_escape_char from gam.cfg will be used
• quotechar <Character> - The column quote characer is <Character>; if not specified, the value of csv_input_quote_char from gam.cfg will be used
• fields <FieldNameList> - The column headings of a CSV file that does not contain column headings.
• (matchfield|skipfield <FieldName> <RegularExpression>)* - The criteria to select rows from the CSV file; can be used multiple times; if not specified, all rows are selected
• showcmds - Write timestamp,command number/number of commands,command to stderr when each command starts; write timestamp, command number/numberof commands,complete to stderr when command completes
• skiprows <Integer> - Skip filtered rows from the CSV file/Google Sheet.
  • skiprows 0 - All rows are processed, this is the default
  • skiprows N - The first N filtered rows are skipped
• maxrows <Integer> - Limit the number of filtered rows processed from the CSV file/Google Sheet after any skipped rows.
  • maxrows 0 - All rows are processed, this is the default
  • maxrows N - N filtered rows are processed

You can make substitutions in <GAMArgumentList> with values from the CSV file.

• Reference the field xxx with ~xxx if the argument contains no other text
• Reference the field xxx with ~~xxx~~ if the argument contains other text
• An argument containing exactly ~xxx is replaced by the value of field xxx
• An argument containing instances of ~~xxx~~ has ~~xxx~~ replaced by the value of field xxx
• An argument containing instances of ~~xxx~!~pattern~!~replacement~~ has ~~xxx~!~pattern~!~replacement~~ replaced by re.sub(pattern, replacement, value of field xxx) See: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html

If an argument is specifying a file path and it starts with a ~, e.g., targetfolder "~/Documents/GamWork", GAM will flag it as an error:

ERROR: Header "/Documents/GamWork/" not found in CSV headers of "Owner,id,title".

Put a space in front of the ~: targetfolder " ~/Documents/GamWork" to avoid the error.

• You need to update the work addresses of a set of users
• You want a note field that shows their email address as name AT domain.com
• You have a CSV file Users.csv with columns: primaryEmail,Street,City,State,ZIP

gam csv Users.csv gam update user "~primaryEmail" address type work unstructured "~~Street~~, ~~City~~, ~~State~~ ~~ZIP~~" primary note text_plain "~~primaryEmail~!~^(.+)@(.+)$~!~\1 AT \2~~"

• You want to do the above using a Google Sheet

gam csv gsheet <user> <fileID> "<sheetName>" gam update user "~primaryEmail" address type work unstructured "~~Street~~, ~~City~~, ~~State~~ ~~ZIP~~" primary note text_plain "~~primaryEmail~!~^(.+)@(.+)$~!~\1 AT \2~~"

You should use the multiprocess option on any redirected files: csv, stdout, stderr.

gam redirect csv ./filelistperms.csv multiprocess csv Users.csv gam user "~primaryEmail" print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions
gam redirect csv - multiprocess todrive csv Users.csv gam user "~primaryEmail" print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions

If you want to select a gam.cfg section for the command, you can select the section at the outer gam and save it or select the section at the inner gam.

gam select <Section> save redirect csv ./filelistperms.csv multiprocess csv Users.csv gam user "~primaryEmail" print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions
gam redirect csv ./filelistperms.csv multiprocess csv Users.csv gam select <Section> user "~primaryEmail" print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions
gam select <Section> save redirect csv - multiprocess todrive csv Users.csv gam user "~primaryEmail" print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions
gam redirect csv - multiprocess todrive csv Users.csv gam select <Section> user "~primaryEmail" print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions

You can enable automatic batch (parallel) processing when issuing commands of the form gam <UserTypeEntity> .... In the following example, if the number of users in group [email protected] exceeds 1, then the print filelist command will be processed in parallel.

gam config auto_batch_min 1 redirect csv ./filelistperms.csv multiprocess group [email protected] print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions
gam config auto_batch_min 1 redirect csv - multiprocess todrive group [email protected] print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions

With automatic batch processing, you should use the multiprocess option on any redirected files: csv, stdout, stderr.

If you want to select a gam.cfg section for the command, you must select and save it for it to be processed correctly.

gam select <Section> save config auto_batch_min 1 redirect csv ./filelistperms.csv multiprocess group [email protected] print filelist fields id,name,mimetype,basicpermissions

You want to process data from a Google Sheet tab and save the results to another tab in the same sheet. Make a Google sheet with two tabs: Commands, Results; get the File ID and the two tab IDs. Put your command data in the Commands tab.

Run your command, write the results to Results.txt

gam redirect stdout ./Results.txt multiprocess redirect stderr stdout csv gsheet [email protected] <FileID> id:<CommandsTabID> gam ... Command

Upload Results.txt to the Results tab of the sheet.

gam user [email protected] update drivefile <FileID> localfile Results.txt retainname gsheet id:<ResultsTabID>