I created a small program where a file dropped over the EXE triggers action on that file. It works fine as long as the path to the file does not contain spaces.
When there is a folder with spaces in the name, such as \Visual Studio 2013\file (actual path much longer), I get an 'Illegal characters in path'.
Under Unix, I would use backspace as escape character such as Visual\ Basic.
How can I manage spaces in path in Visual Basic ? Is there a marker to enter before space to avoid the eror, or is there something else ?
Thank you in advance for your help
Command() is an array of sting. When you pass the command line to your application it considers that spaces delimits new parameters unless you place them between double quotes.
Perhaps can you try with Command.ToString()
Related
when i run a command on windows 10 command line that requires a path as one of its params, it works if the path is NOT inside a quotation, but if a path has a space in it, i need to wrap it inside quotes so that it treats as one single path, but then it complains that the file in that path does not exists.
For example:
C:/PROJECTS/desktopfiles/public/libs/cpdf/win64/cpdf.exe C:/Users/john/Documents/cat.pdf C:/Users/john/Documents/my_dog.pdf -o C:/Users/john/Documents/cat_dog_Merged.pdf
The above works,
the below doesn't (because there is a space in my dog.pdf)
C:/PROJECTS/desktopfiles/public/libs/cpdf/win64/cpdf.exe C:/Users/john/Documents/cat.pdf C:/Users/john/Documents/my dog.pdf -o C:/Users/john/Documents/cat_dog_Merged.pdf
You could try to replace spaces with a question mark. The question mark is a wildcard to match "any single character", which would be a space in your case. Like this: my?dog.pdf. Just make sure that there is no other file matching this pattern. But the system should give you some error message then (which might or might not point to the root of the problem).
Another solution that comes to my mind is a batch file that renames the files in question automatically (replacing spaces with underscores) and renames them back after the pdf merge.
I've been trying to write a function for my bash profile for quite some time now.
The problem I'm trying to overcome is I'm usually provided with file paths that include spaces and it's a pain having to go through and escape all the spaces before I try to open it up in terminal.
e.g.
File -> /Volumes/Company/Illustrators/Website Front Page Design.ai
What I'm trying to end up with is '/Volumes/Company/Illustrators/Website\ Front\ Page\ Design.ai' being opened from my terminal.
So far I've managed to escape the spaces out, but I then get the error "The file ..... does not exist."
My code so far is
function opn { open "${1// /\\ }";}
Any help would be very much appreciated.
The important thing to understand is the difference between syntax and literal data.
When done correctly, escaping is syntax: It's read and discarded by the shell. That is, when you run
open "File With Spaces"
or
open File\ With\ Spaces
or even
open File" "With\ Spaces
...the quoting and escaping is parsed and removed by the shell, and the actual operating system call that gets executed is this:
execv("/usr/bin/open", "open", "File With Spaces")
Note that there aren't any backslashes (or literal quotes) in that syscall's arguments! If you put literal backslashes in your data, then you cause this to be run:
/* this is C syntax, so "\\" is a single-character backslash literal */
execv("/usr/bin/open", "open", "File\\ With\\ Spaces")
...and unless there's a file with backslashes in its name, that just doesn't work, giving the "file does not exist" error you report.
So -- just call open with your name in quotes:
open "$1"
...there's no need for an opn wrappper.
Spaces are problematic in filenames because they're part of bash's default IFS (Internal Field Separator), which is used to separate tokens in a command line. That means that by default, when you use command an argument with spaces, the command will receive 4 arguments rather than 1 containing spaces.
I'm guessing you called your opn function in the same way, thus resulting in only the first part of your path as $1.
Hopefully, the fix is easy : enclose your path in quotes so that bash does not interpret the spaces. By using this, the need for your opn function disappears : open "/Volumes/Company/Illustrators/Website Front Page Design.ai" should work just fine.
This is my very simple code, which isn't working, for some reason I can't figure out.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Copy;
$old = "car_lexusisf_gray_30inclination_000azimuth.png";
$new = "C:\Users\Lenovo\Documents\mycomp\simulation\cars\zzzorganizedbyviews\00inclination_000azimuth\lexuscopy.png";
copy ($old, $new) or die "File cannot be copied.";
I get the error that the file can't be copied.
I know there's nothing wrong with the copy command because if I set the value of $new to something simple without a path, it works. But what is wrong in the representation of the path as I've written it above? If I copy and past it into the address bar of windows explorer, it reaches that folder fine.
Tip: print out the paths before you perform the copy. You'll see this:
C:SERSenovodocumentsmycompsimulationrszzzorganizedbyviewsinclination_000azimuthexuscopy.png
Not what we wanted. The backslash is an escape character in Perl, which needs to be escaped itself. If the backslash sequence does not form a valid escape, then it's silently ignored. With escaped backslashes, your string would look like:
"C:\\Users\\Lenovo\\Documents\\mycomp\\simulation\\cars\\zzzorganizedbyviews\\00inclination_000azimuth\\lexuscopy.png";
or just use forward slashes instead – in most cases, Unix-style paths work fine on Windows too.
Here is a list of escapes you accidentally used:
\U uppercases the rest
\L lowercases the rest
\ca is a control character (ASCII 1, the start of heading)
\00 is an octal character, here the NUL byte
\l lowercases the next character.
If no interpolation is intended, use single quotes instead of double quotes.
I noticed that cmd seems to accept some characters at the ends of commands. for example all of the following function correctly:
cls.
cls;
cls(
cls\
cls+
cls=
cls\"whatever"
cls\$
cls\#
and these do not:
cls'
cls$
cls)
cls-
cls#
cls\/
Does anybody know why this happens?
Thanks in advance.
It depends on the batch parser.
;,= are general batch delimiters, so you can append/prepend them to the most commands without effect.
;,,= ,=; echo hello
;,cls,;,,
The . dot can be appended to the most commands, as the parser will try to find a file named cls (without extension) cls.exe cls.bat, and when nothing is found then it takes the internal command.
The opening bracket is also a special charcter that the parser removes without error.
The \ backslash is used as path delimiter, so sometimes it works but sometimes you could change even the command.
cls\..\..\..\windows\system32\calc.exe
Without using slashes (/) or backslashes (\), is there any way I can create a file on an external drive using a relative path on windows?
Or, put less confusingly...
Say I have to append whatever I do to the path:
C:\Application Data\blib\
Is there any way I can do something like:
C:\Application Data\blib\<WINDOWS_SORCERY>external:\wherever\file.txt
I've tried inserting delete characters (\x7f) and backspace characters (\x08), and the reserved characters, but nothing doing. And from what I can tell the reserved characters would only be helpful if the file were being created from within a batch script; it's being created in a Java program.
edit: By 'nothing doing' I mean I get an error message; the program doesn't strip those characters out.