$Debug

$Console:Only

Option _Explicit



Dim MountedImageDriveLetter As String

Dim Cmd As String

Dim GetLine As String

Dim count As Integer

Dim FullPathToImage As String

Dim ISO_Path As String

Dim CurrentFile As String

Dim ff1 As Long

Dim FileSpec As String



' This program is placed in a folder that contains a number of files including files that take the form

' "EXPORTED DRIVERS*.iso". The program is supposed to mount each ISO image file (the first powershell command),

' and then it runs another command sending the output of that command to a file called MountInfo.txt. Next,

' we open MountInfo.txt and read 4 lines. The 4th line will contain the drive letter to which the ISO image was

' mounted. We save the drive letter and a colon (D: as an example) in MountedImageDriveLetter$. We then close

' MountInfo.txt and delete it. As a confirmation we print the drive letter to the screen.

'

' Here now is where the problem begins: We use _File$ to retrieve the next file matching the pattern

' "EXPORTED DRIVERS*.iso". However, upon running this command it returns an empty string rather than the next

' file name. Why???? For the life of me I cannot figure it out!



' Please note that I have commented out all of the lines that do the heavy lifting. In the current state, this

' program simply gets the first file name, prints it to the screen, then it gets the next file name. This works

' flawlessly! But when I uncomment all the lines in the DO loop the line "CurrentFile$ = _Files$" simply returns

' an empty string.



' TIP: I suggest running this in debug mode and then start the program paused. Press F4 and add all variables

' to watch. Then press F7 to step through one line at a time. You will see that the first file name is retrieved

' correctly, but when you reach line 68 it fails to get the next file name when the lines in the DO loop are

' uncommented but it does work with those lines commented out.



' Make sure to create a number of files with a .iso extension in the same folder with the program. These should

' be real ISO image files because we are actually mounting them with this program.



ISO_Path$ = _CWD$



FileSpec$ = ISO_Path$ + "\EXPORTED DRIVERS*.iso"



CurrentFile$ = _Files$(FileSpec$)



Do While Len(CurrentFile$) > 0

    '    MountedImageDriveLetter$ = ""

    '    FullPathToImage$ = ISO_Path$ + "\" + CurrentFile$



    '    Cmd$ = "powershell.exe -command " + Chr$(34) + "Mount-DiskImage " + Chr$(34) + "'" + FullPathToImage$ + "'" + Chr$(34) + Chr$(34) + " > NUL"

    '    Shell Cmd$

    '    Cmd$ = "powershell.exe -command " + Chr$(34) + "Get-DiskImage -ImagePath '" + FullPathToImage$ + "' | Get-Volume" + Chr$(34) + " > MountInfo.txt"

    '    Shell Cmd$



    '    ff1 = FreeFile

    '    Open "MountInfo.txt" For Input As #ff1



    '    For count = 1 To 4

    '        Line Input #ff1, GetLine$

    '    Next count



    '    MountedImageDriveLetter$ = Left$(GetLine$, 1) + ":"

    '    Close #ff1

    '    Kill "MountInfo.txt"



    '    Print MountedImageDriveLetter$

    Print CurrentFile$



    CurrentFile$ = _Files$

Loop





End

a$ = _Files$("*.*")



Print 1, a$



t$ = "temp.tmp"

Open t$ For Output As #1

a$ = _Files$

Print 2, a$



Close

a$ = _Files$

Print 3, a$



Kill t$

a$ = _Files$

Print 4, a$

(10-10-2024, 09:54 AM)hanness Wrote: Let me make sure that I understand...

Even though the kill command is not removing any of the files that _Files$ is working with are we saying that the problem is simply that we altering the directory contents while we are working with that directory using _Files$?

If I create and then kill that text file in a different location, would that solve the problem? Apologies, I would simply try this myself but I won't be in front of that system until morning.

I had also thought that using an array would be a good workaround, but I wanted to understand why I was having this difficulty.

Thanks for the help!

(10-10-2024, 01:09 PM)RhoSigma Wrote:

(10-10-2024, 09:54 AM)hanness Wrote: Let me make sure that I understand...

Even though the kill command is not removing any of the files that _Files$ is working with are we saying that the problem is simply that we altering the directory contents while we are working with that directory using _Files$?

If I create and then kill that text file in a different location, would that solve the problem? Apologies, I would simply try this myself but I won't be in front of that system until morning.

I had also thought that using an array would be a good workaround, but I wanted to understand why I was having this difficulty.

Thanks for the help!

Although I'm with Steve, that a seperate state should be used here, it wouldn't solve the problem of bad programming you do here. You never should change the floor while you walking on it. Climbing a stairway always becomes dangerous when another guy is randomly removing steps at the same time.

As Steve said, rather read the whole directory into an array and after that's done use the array to modifiy the directory entries as needed.