Find name of Windows folder

[Bill Warner]

I have a routine that looks for a file in the Windows folder, and aborts the program if it's not there. I use Wise installer to put the file there (Wise knows to put it in whatever the folder is named). Now, I need to know what it's called.

Good old MS - they call it WINDOWS or WINNT or WIN2000 (there are probably other names), and then the user might rename the folder when re-installing Windows.

Does anyone know of a way to find the name of the current Windows folder?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Robert Adler]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Bill:

Try the filefind_get() command.

I hope this helps.

bob adler

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Bill

I suspect you are trying the find the name of the Windows program folder on a particular computer. This is a problem I hope someone answers as I have pondered the same issue. Microsoft in their "wisdom" uses different folders in each operation system. I guess if you can identify the operation system, you should be able to determine the most likely name used. However, my Win2000 system has both a Windows folder and a WinNT folder. I notice the registry refers to the program folder as an alias, but I haven't found a way to use that in Alpha.

Jerry

[Edward Larrabee]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Though I don't have the information at hand, I know there is a Windows API that returns the Windows folder name.

[Stan Mathews]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Doesn't Alpha have to know where the windows folder is to use with

REGISTRY.SAVE_SETTINGS() ?

Just a question of how to access it.

[Al Walker]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

How about the value of variable windir or SystemRoot in the environment as displayed with the SET command at a DOS prompt.

I'm not sure if this is the same for all current versions of Windows, but it could be. I'm using W2k.

Al Walker

[Stephen Andrews]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Bill,

In line with Bob's suggestion of using filefind.get(), here is a short function which will maybe suffice your needs. I say "maybe" because if your system had a subdirectory named "C:\Whacky\system32" this function would return "Whacky". Thus, some assumptions are built in here.

'----------
FUNCTION systemroot AS C ( )
dim dirs as C
DIM cfile AS C
DIM j AS N
DIM sub_dir AS C

win_dirs = FileFind.get("C:\W*",FILE_FIND_DIRECTORY)
systemroot=""

j=1
for j = 1 to w_count(win_dirs)
sub_dir = "C:"+chr(92)+word(win_dirs,j)
cfile = sub_dir+chr(92)+"system32"
if file.exists(cfile) then
systemroot = sub_dir
END
end if
next j

END FUNCTION
'----------

I'm sure that some low-level functions within Alpha are sure to be a reliable means to get the system path but this is a work-around for now.

Steve

[Lenny Forziati]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Actually there is no reliable way (that I know of) in V5 to find out the path to the folder that Windows was installed to. And beyond the choices you listed, MS lets you specify any path you want when you install Windows so I could have installed it into c:\MyOS if I wanted to.

Al Walker has probably come up with the best suggestion. For V6 we've added the ability to read these environment values directly, but that doesn't help you now. For know though you could do something like

file = "c:\temp.bat"
batch = "echo %windir% > c:\windir.txt"
save_to_file(batch,file)
sys_shell(file)
windir = get_from_file("c:\windir.txt")
file.remove(file)
file.remove("c:\windir.txt")
?windir
= C:\WINDOWS

-Lenny

[Bill Warner]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Lenny,

Your script works beautifully! Al's suggestion was great.

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Lenny

I had to modify the code a little to get it to work in a script, but it does work ok. The little flash of DOS is annoying, but not a big deal.

file = "c:\temp.bat"
batch = "echo %windir% > c:\windir.txt"

save_to_file(batch,file)
sys_shell(file)
while .not. file.exists("c:\windir.txt")
sleep(.01)
end while
windir = get_from_file("c:\windir.txt")
file.remove(file)
file.remove("c:\windir.txt")

Jerry

[CALocklin]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Since it gets the info from the registry (not with std A5 methods), I'm not sure it's a good idea to post the code but attached is an aex file that will pull it without the screen flashing.

To install it, just put the .aex file in your "A5v5 program folder>\addins_installed folder and restart a5. To use it, call the function System_root(). (For those not familiar with .aex files, the function name does not need to be the same as the .aex file name. It's only that way in this case because I did it that way.)

I've tested it in Win98SE and XP. I'd appreciate confirmation on any other OS. And, if anyone finds a problem with it, please post it and I'll try to fix it.

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Cal

I tried it in WinXP with the following results from Alpha Sports

?system_root()
ERROR: The system cannot find the file specified.
...c:\program files\a5v5\samples\alphasports\winfldr.reg

Jerry

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Cal

The problem seems to be the same I saw with Lenny code. The code is looking for the file before it is written. With faster processors and systems, sometimes there needs to be a check to wait until the file is actually written. I am also not sure the registry key you are using will be found on all operating systems. That is one of the limitations that kept me from trying the registry method.

Jerry

[JerryBrightbill]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Scratch the last statement. I see you are checking registry keys for both Windows and WindowsNT.

Jerry

[Finian Lennon]

RE: Find name of Windows folder

Jerry:

Run the sys_shell with the ,2 parameter and the very brief appearance of the file name on the task bar is hardly noticeable if, indeed, you see anything at all with such a few lines of code.

Finian