Compare tool's reporting unexpected result

[pincpanter]

So I decided to try generating a report after comparing two vi's hierarchies. I know that LabVIEW may have problems interfacing with Office, so I maliciously selected the Word format.

I selected C:\Temp\compare.doc as target file. The hierarchies were rather big, so it took some minutes to finish, during which LabVIEW was rather unresponsive.

When done, I searched the document in the target folder... but wait, where is the folder? It turns out that LabVIEW completely WIPED OUT C:\Temp from my disk! Despite the name, it was an 8 GB folder. Happily I had a recent backup that I could restore!

[Bob_Schor]

What, exactly, did you do?  I've been using the Compare tool for decades without problems (except a brief time about a decade ago when it didn't seem to be available, but I've never tried (nor do I know how) to "generate a report".

I'm assuming (??) that you wrote some LabVIEW code to do what you describe in your Post that had the "unexpected result".  It would certainly help me (and possibly others who might want to do something similar) to understand exactly what you did -- maybe we can "find the bug", or suggest a work-around, or even avoid doing this ourselves.

Please attach the LabVIEW code (any version from the last 5 supported, e.g. LabVIEW 2017 or later).  If this is part of a LabVIEW Project, please include the entire Project as a compressed (.ZIP) file.

Bob Schor

[JÞB]

Are you ABSOLUTELY certain that LabVIEW did that?

Just about every Windows system maintenance is going to wipe <Temp> .  It's REALLY not a good location to store data you want to keep.

[pincpanter]

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@Bob_Schor  ha scritto:

What, exactly, did you do?  I've been using the Compare tool for decades without problems (except a brief time about a decade ago when it didn't seem to be available, but I've never tried (nor do I know how) to "generate a report".

I'm assuming (??) that you wrote some LabVIEW code to do what you describe in your Post that had the "unexpected result".  It would certainly help me (and possibly others who might want to do something similar) to understand exactly what you did -- maybe we can "find the bug", or suggest a work-around, or even avoid doing this ourselves.

Bob Schor

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I did not use any code, I simply clicked the Create Report button:

then selected Word format:

The details are:

LabVIEW 17.0.1f3 32 bit

Microsoft® Word 2016 MSO (Versione 2203 Build 16.0.15028.20152) a 64 bit.

The full hierarchy includes approximately 900 vi's.

When I later opened Word, the file C:\Temp\\compare.doc was in the recent file list.

Also, the recover utility Recuva could find at least a part of the disappeared files (I did not check thoroughly, I was just curious to see if there was some traces left).

As for me, I don't think I will use the reporting function again, while I guess that choosing a text format may be less harmful.

[pincpanter]

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@JÞB  ha scritto:

Are you ABSOLUTELY certain that LabVIEW did that?

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Let's say I'm confident at the 99.99999% level. The folder was there since a couple of years. I have still plenty of free space on my drive, so although I named the folder Temp I didn't actually cleaned much therein, delaying clean-up until I will really need more space on disk.

Just about every Windows system maintenance is going to wipe <Temp> .  It's REALLY not a good location to store data you want to keep.

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I strongly disagree. This folder was created and owned by me, not by the Windows system. Environment variables such as %TEMP% and %TMP% correctly point to system directories. Lastly, I did not explicitly activated any maintenance utility.