Impact of changing ctl file extension

[JÞB]

Oh, I knew the extensions didn't change how LabVIEW worked.  Occam's Razor is only a tool for creating a hypothesis and suggesting avenues of exploration. 

But, there you showed a typedef with a vi display name.  Not incontrovertible proof, as the display name can be edited without changing the file extention. I'll concede the point without seeing the hierarchy views and trust your diligence.  I don't envy your recent inherentance!  The author may have done other interesting things.   <Read that as: "May have been exceptionally braindamaged."> 

[JÞB]

Or, possibly the author prefered Visual Studio Active X user controls in text format and really did have a (poor) reason for avoiding the ctl extensions. 

[Intaris]

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@JÞB wrote:

Oh, I knew the extensions didn't change how LabVIEW worked.  Occam's Razor is only a tool for creating a hypothesis and suggesting avenues of exploration. 

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From Wikipedia with regard to Occam's razor:

This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions

[JÞB]

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@Intaris wrote:

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@JÞB wrote:

Oh, I knew the extensions didn't change how LabVIEW worked.  Occam's Razor is only a tool for creating a hypothesis and suggesting avenues of exploration. 

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From Wikipedia with regard to Occam's razor:

This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions

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I stand corrected! I applied Hanlon's Razor.  Which, you can also apply to determine that I most likely meant no harm by the misstatement.  😄

[Intaris]

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@JÞB wrote:

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I stand corrected! I applied Hanlon's Razor.  Which, you can also apply to determine that I most likely meant no harm by the misstatement.  😄

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Hanlon's razor always reminds me of this sketch, where the idiot is played by an actor called Ardal O'Hanlon....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMiKyfd6hA0

[James_W]

I'm going to chip in here and suggest that maybe the original developer was not brain damaged.. Indeed very devious.
I suspect they had 1 script to change all .ctl to .vi that they ran continuously - or just before releasing. 

This ensured 2 things:
1) Code obfuscation for other developers attempting to take their job
2) Limited the number of file extensions they had to battle with IT about when it came to nasty AV products  trying to take down their system constantly.

If obfuscation is desired to get the work to keep coming back to you, then that was a very simple but devious way of doing it.

If it was developed externally, then the source code is all there and the OP is looking at the output of a really annoyed developer who has had to hand over the source unlocked (but will have all the .ctl files named correctly themselves😉). I've got annoyed in a previous job more than once after a contract got changed after I was consulting by the higher management team and internal IP was forcibly released without protection, setting us back years. I might have done that if I'd known about it. 😂

Sorry - doesn't help the OP.

In their place I'd now be writing a VI script to scan the project for all items and check to see if the item is a VI or .ctl and if it's a .ctl rename it to the correct extension.

James

[JÞB]

If you go back a few posts I Googled the ctl extension.  It appears to also be used by MS Studio for the text file of Active X User Controls.  I doubt Studio could deal with File extensions changing but, LabVIEW does that gracefully.  

So, the OPS code author can likely be accused of simply having poor taste in code development environments.

[Yamaeda]

I just did a test and created a Global VI with a text ring, it looks very much like your VI except for the icon.