DIR$ - Folder name with period

[Roy Petrie]

As part of a backup programme I extract a list of all folders on a hard drive and have always suspected that the list was not complete.

With some spare time at the moment I have revisited this and have found that the DIR$ function with the attribute set to 16, 17, 19 or 23 will not return a folder name that contains a period.

Microsoft KB article KB905231 states that a period in a folder name is legal and accessing the folder in DOS works.

If anyone can help with this one I would be obliged.

TIA
Roy

[Mel Bishop]

Kind of an odd problem you got there. Wrote the following CC5 test code. Made sure my root directory contained a folder with a period in it and it works perfectly.

FUNCTION PBMAIN () AS LONG
    mask$ = "c:\*.*"
    te$ = DIR$(mask$,16)
    DO UNTIL te$ = ""
    PRINT;te$
    te$ = DIR$
    LOOP
    WAITKEY$
    END FUNCTION

How about a snippit of what you are using?

[Roy Petrie]

Mel, thanks for reply.

I was using PBCC4 but upgraded to PBCC5 in case that was the issue and hence the delay.

I had been using a mask of "c:\*." but when I use your mask of "C:\*.*" I agree I now see the folder with the period but I am also seeing the one file in my route directory.

It seems to me that the DIR$ function is ignoring the attribute 16 and searching for folders when the mask is set to "*." and files when it is set to "*.*".

Am I missing something here?

TIA Roy

[Michael Mattias]

If you want ONLY folders in response to DIR$, you ONLY have to read the 5x doc...

[Jeff Blakeney]

Personally, I think if you leave the closing quote off your mask string, you are creating a syntax error so your results should be undefined. After all, without the closing quote, there could be anything appended to the end of your mask string.

[Michael Mattias]

In a simple assignment of a literal to a string variable, if no closing quote is found the compiler will infer that closing double-quote following the last non-space (non whitespace?) character of the line of source code.

I agree it should be a syntax error to leave it off; but it's not, and it's documented that it's not required.

[Mel Bishop]

...Am I missing something here?

Well, maybe a little.

DIR$ searches everything in the folder.

A mask of "*." will return only file names/folders, ignoring any extensions.

A mask of "*.*" will search filenames AND extensions and return anything matching mask$,attribute.

Remember, windows "see's" folders as just another file name. It's all in the attribute associated with that name that makes the difference.

[Jeff Blakeney]

Whoops. My eyes are going. I could have sworn I saw a "*.* where there is a "*.".