Latest DNG converter not working in command-line mode

Question

Today I downloaded Adobe's latest DNG converter. It is failing with both .NEF and .CR2 files when run in command-line mode. It does appear to work in GUI mode. The switches+arguments I've used for my tests are:
-u -e -p1 filename.CR2
(or filename.NEF)
With an older (CS2) version of the converter, the above arguments produce a .DNG output file as expected (with .CR2 files; I didn't try it with D3 .NEF files; surely that older version doesn't support the D3's format).
With the very latest version, running the program with the above command produces no output. There's no error message.
The 'readme' file that comes with the converter doesn't include any information about command-line usage, but I did find a PDF file covering this (adobe.com/products/dng/pdfs/dng_commandline.pdf). The switches+arguments shown in the PDF file appear to be exactly the ones I used in the past.
I'm sure I'll need to use the most recent version to convert D3 RAW files. Is there something wrong with how I'm specifying its command-line switches/arguments?

Answer 1

It struck me silly that I've been running tests with v.3.3 when 5.2 is the latest, so I downloaded it. The setup "wizard"...hmm, why is it a "wizard"? It provides no choice of installation path. I didn't realize this because immediately after I'd launched it, I knocked something onto the floor, reached down to pick it up ... and looked back up just in time to see the "wizard" complete the installation...but where, I didn't know. It didn't display any information about where it had installed the app. Adventures In Discoverability. :) I hunted around on the hard drive until I found it (C:\Program Files\Adobe -- well, at least you can launch it if you think to look for it in the 'Start' menu). So ... that needs a bit of work. Anyway, I copied the app into a directory of my choice -- one that's in my system's %PATH%, replacing spaces in the name with underscores. It works fine in that directory -- no problem with the name-change as far as I can tell. Now back to the fun stuff...
This version doesn't seem to require a fully qualified path to the input file or to the output directory when "-d" is used. That's an improvement. IOW, this worked:
converter -p1 -d DNG filename
where "converter" is the program's name, "DNG" is the name of a subdirectory of the directory where I'm running the test, and "filename" is the name of a RAW file in that directory.
The program still doesn't know how to create a directory (or ask about creating one if it doesn't exist). Fails silently if "-d" is used and the specified directory doesn't exist. But at least this version returns an exit code of 1 due to the failure -- better than returning 0.
Still doesn't understand wildcards. Hope done sprang eternal there for a moment, but oh well. Back to "for" loops...
Still fails silently, returning exit code 0 (oops), if a nonsensical command-line is used (e.g., using "-c" as the only argument).
Hey, how about a truly silly command-line error -- a command line including both "-c" and "-u". What happens? It "consumes" the first of the two mutually exclusive switches, ignoring the second -- you get a compressed DNG file. Swap the order of the switches, and you get an uncompressed file. (I'd vote for a syntax-error message in that case, m'self.)
Interestingly strange little program...If I run it from the command line, it drops back to the command line immediately after I press ENTER. That makes it appear to have failed. But it hasn't -- it's running in the background, and a few seconds later the DNG file is created. But, if I run it from within a batch file, it does NOT return control to me until it has completed writing the output file. Wonder what's up with that.
Fun stuff. :)