Path Woes

[paul_cardinale]

While working on some code that processes paths, I ran into a perplexing bug (in my code).  It took me quite a while to figure it out.

Paths were being generated that looked fine, but wouldn't work.

The attached code illustrates what was happening (though it wasn't so obvious in my real code).  Run the VI.  The Bad Path "looks" exactly the same as the Good Path.  But they're not the same.  The array indicators show what went wrong.

[AeroSoul]

Is there any benefit/difference to operating with arrays on path, rather than with strings?

I usually operate with strings and then concatenate them to a full path

[paul_cardinale]

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@AeroSoul wrote:

Is there any benefit/difference to operating with arrays on path, rather than with strings?

I usually operate with strings and then concatenate them to a full path

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With arrays, each path element is a separate element in the array.

With strings, path elements are separated by delimiters that are specific to the file system ("\" in Windows).

[billko]

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@paul_cardinale wrote:

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@AeroSoul wrote:

Is there any benefit/difference to operating with arrays on path, rather than with strings?

I usually operate with strings and then concatenate them to a full path

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With arrays, each path element is a separate element in the array.

With strings, path elements are separated by delimiters that are specific to the file system ("\" in Windows).

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Do you index the array into each "Build Path" primitive?  That's how I do it.

[paul_cardinale]

As a side note, these can come in handy sometimes:

vi.lib\Utility\sysinfo.llb\Get File System Separator.vi

vi.lib\Utility\sysinfo.llb\Get File System Root Name.vi

vi.lib\Utility\sysinfo.llb\Get File System Parent.vi

[paul_cardinale]

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@billko wrote:

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@paul_cardinale wrote:

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@AeroSoul wrote:

Is there any benefit/difference to operating with arrays on path, rather than with strings?

I usually operate with strings and then concatenate them to a full path

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With arrays, each path element is a separate element in the array.

With strings, path elements are separated by delimiters that are specific to the file system ("\" in Windows).

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Do you index the array into each "Build Path" primitive?  That's how I do it.

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Not sure what you mean.

[billko]

I didn't have LabVIEW on this computer, so I assumed you had pieces of the path in an array and to build the path you just indexed the array.

[AeroSoul]

ah, so it's more for universality among different OS.

I operate exclusively on windows, so i usually just use strings.

[paul_cardinale]

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@AeroSoul wrote:

ah, so it's more for universality among different OS.

I operate exclusively on windows, so i usually just use strings.

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Lacking a crystal ball, I don't assume that my code will never be used with a different file system; I consider such an assumption to be bad coding practice.

[JÞB]

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@paul_cardinale wrote:

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@AeroSoul wrote:

ah, so it's more for universality among different OS.

I operate exclusively on windows, so i usually just use strings.

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Lacking a crystal ball, I don't assume that my code will never be used with a different file system; I consider such an assumption to be bad coding practice.

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Try this improved method