How to open the file system of a volume in CreateFile? - windows

The MSDN page on CreateFile says: The string "\\.\C:\" can be used to open the file system of the C: volume. However, the following code always returns an error : ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND.
HANDLE h = CreateFile(L"\\\\.\\C:\\", FILE_READ_ATTRIBUTES,
FILE_SHARE_READ|FILE_SHARE_WRITE|FILE_SHARE_DELETE, 0, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0);
How should I pass the arguments correctly?

If you wanted a volume handle (for use with I/O control codes) you would have needed to drop the trailing slash.
In order to get a handle to the root directory, you need to keep the trailing slash and pass the FILE_FLAG_BACKUP_SEMANTICS flag in the dwFlagsAndAttributes argument. This is documented on the MSDN page under the heading "Directories". For example, this is what you want to do if you're planning to call GetFileInformationByHandle or GetFileInformationByHandleEx.
Ordinarily, however, you wouldn't open a handle to the root directory in order to list the files. Instead, you would use FindFirstFile/FindNextFile or one of the related functions.

Try dropping the trailing slash:
L"\\\\.\\C:"

Related

Windows ShellExecuteW with filename that exceeds MAX_PATH (260 characters)

I am struggling to understand what may be causing the issue in my case.
I am using
ShellExecuteW('open', 'explorer.exe', '/select,[file_name]', None, win32con.SW_SHOW)
What I am trying to do is open the file in the OS, highlight it, and bring the File Explorer to the foreground. This works fine for most cases, but when I try to open a file that exceeds the MAX_PATH limit (260 characters), the file doesn't open, and instead it takes me to the "My Files" page.
I have tried prepending "\\?\" to the beginning of my file name, because that is what other Stack Overflow posts said to do with regards to overriding the MAX_PATH limit, but it has not changed the situation.
Does the ShellExecuteW function not allow for files that exceed MAX_PATH? And, if so, is there any workaround I could use?
I read some cases, about this issue. Find this article:Long Paths in .NET, Part 1 of 3 [Kim Hamilton]
If you prefix the file name with "\?\" and call the Unicode versions of the Windows APIs, then you can use file names up to 32K characters in length. In other words, the \?\ prefix is a way to enable long paths while working with the Windows file APIs.
and:
Long paths with the \?\ prefix can be used in most of the file-related Windows APIs, but not all Windows APIs.
I also test ShellExcuteW with \\?\,it failed.
Working well with SHOpenFolderAndSelectItems
CoInitialize(NULL);
LPCWSTR file_name ;//Change the path according to your needs
PIDLIST_ABSOLUTE pidl;
if (SUCCEEDED(SHParseDisplayName(file_name, 0, &pidl, 0, 0)))
{
ITEMIDLIST idNull = { 0 };
LPCITEMIDLIST pidlNull[1] = { &idNull };
SHOpenFolderAndSelectItems(pidl, 1, pidlNull, 0);
ILFree(pidl);
}
Note:CoInitialize or CoInitializeEx must be called before using SHOpenFolderAndSelectItems. Not doing so causes SHOpenFolderAndSelectItems to fail.

Opening filehandles for use with TabularMSA in skbio

Hey there skbio team.
So I need to allow either DNA or RNA MSAs. When I do the following, if I leave out the alignment_fh.close() skbio reads the 'non header' line in the except block making me think I need to close the file first so it will start at the beginning, but if I add alignment_fh.close() I cannot get it to read the file. I've tried opening it via a variety of methods, but I believe TabularMSA.read() should allow files OR file handles. Thoughts? Thank you!
try:
aln = skbio.TabularMSA.read(alignment_fh, constructor=skbio.RNA)
except:
alignment_fh.close()
aln = skbio.TabularMSA.read(alignment_fh, constructor=skbio.DNA)
I've tried opening it via a variety of methods, but I believe TabularMSA.read() should allow files OR file handles.
You're correct: scikit-bio generally supports reading and writing files using open file handles or file paths.
The issue you're running into is that your first TabularMSA.read() call reads the entire contents of the open file handle, so that when the second TabularMSA.read() call is hit within the except block, the file pointer is already at the end of the open file handle -- this is why you're getting an error message hinting that the file is empty.
This behavior is intentional; when scikit-bio is given an open file handle, it will read from or write to the file but won't attempt to manage the handle's file pointer (that type of management is up to the caller of the code).
Now, when asking scikit-bio to read a file path (i.e. a string containing the path to a file on disk or accessible at some URI), scikit-bio will handle opening and closing the file handle for you, so that's often the easier way to go.
You can use file paths or file handles to accomplish your goal. In the following examples, suppose aln_filepath is a str pointing to your alignment file on disk (e.g. "/path/to/my/alignment.fasta").
With file paths: You can simply pass the file path to both TabularMSA.read() calls; no open() or close() calls are necessary on your part.
try:
aln = skbio.TabularMSA.read(aln_filepath, constructor=skbio.RNA)
except ValueError:
aln = skbio.TabularMSA.read(aln_filepath, constructor=skbio.DNA)
With file handles: You'll need to open a file handle and reset the file pointer within your except block before reading a second time.
with open(aln_filepath, 'r') as aln_filehandle:
try:
aln = skbio.TabularMSA.read(aln_filehandle, constructor=skbio.RNA)
except ValueError:
aln_filehandle.seek(0) # reset file pointer to beginning of file
aln = skbio.TabularMSA.read(aln_filehandle, constructor=skbio.DNA)
Note: In both examples, I've used except ValueError instead of a "catch-all" except statement. I recommend catching specific error types (e.g. ValueError) instead of any exception because the code could be failing in different ways than what you're expecting. For example, with a "catch-all" except statement, users won't be able to interrupt your program with Ctrl-C because KeyboardInterrupt will be caught and ignored.

Does CreateFileMappingA write to file?

I was debugging some WinAPI application.
Right before the call to the function CreateFileMappingA the file's size was 0Kb. Immediately after the call to the function, the file got around 200Kb. I tried browsing the online Windows API documentation but didn't find anything (or not understand perhaps) whether a file write would occur after the function call. The flProtect parameter's value was PAGE_READWRITE.
I'd really like to know what the function really does, and especially why this write to the file.
After some research, I found out that the function CreateFileMappingA was being called like this:
CreateFileMappingA(fh, NULL, PAGE_READWRITE, 0, 0x336BC, "kll");
According to the documentation, if the file size would be lower than the length the mapping targets, the file would be extended to fit the size.
So in my case, the file was just created.
fh = CreateFileA("file2.dat", GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_WRITE,
NULL, CREATE_ALWAYS, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
So first, the file "file2.dat" would be created with write privileges. It would be 0Kb. Then, right after the call above to CreateFileMappingA, the file size would be 0x336BC bytes, or 206Kb.

SHFileOperation FOF_ALLOWUNDO fails on long filenames

I'm using the following function to delete a file to the recycle bin: (C++, MFC, Unicode)
bool DeleteFileToPaperbasket (CString filename)
{
TCHAR Buffer[2048+4];
_tcsncpy_s (Buffer, 2048+4, filename, 2048);
Buffer[_tcslen(Buffer)+1]=0; //Double-Null-Termination
SHFILEOPSTRUCT s;
s.hwnd = NULL;
s.wFunc = FO_DELETE;
s.pFrom = Buffer;
s.pTo = NULL;
s.fFlags = FOF_ALLOWUNDO | FOF_SILENT | FOF_NOERRORUI;
s.fAnyOperationsAborted = false;
s.hNameMappings = NULL;
s.lpszProgressTitle = NULL;
int rc = SHFileOperation(&s);
return (rc==0);
}
This works nicely for most files. But if path+filename exceed 255 characters (and still much shorter that 2048 characters), SHFileOperation returns 124. Which is DE_INVALIDFILES.
But what's wrong? I checked everything a million times. The path is double-null terminated, I'm not using \\?\ and it works for short filenames.
I'm totally out of ideas...
I think backwards comparability is biting you in the --- in several ways, and I'd need to actually see the paths your using and implement some error checking code to help. But here are some hints.
You would not get a DE_INVALIDFILES 0x7C "The path in the source or destination or both was invalid." for a max path violation, you'd get a DE_PATHTOODEEP 0x79 "The source or destination path exceeded or would exceed MAX_PATH."
These error codes(return value) do, can, and have changed over time, to be sure what your specific error code means, you need to check it with GetLastError function(msdn)
Also, taken from the SHFileOperation function documentation: "If you do not check fAnyOperationsAborted as well as the return value, you cannot know that the function accomplished the full task you asked of it and you might proceed under incorrect assumptions."
You should not be using this API for extremely long path names, it has been replaced in vista+ by IFileOperation interface
The explanation for why it may work in explorer and not thru this LEGACY api is - Taken from the msdn page on Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces
The shell and the file system have different requirements. It is
possible to create a path with the Windows API that the shell user
interface is not able to interpret properly.
Hope this was helpful
The recycle bin doesn't support files whose paths exceed MAX_PATH in length. You can verify this for yourself by trying to recycle such a file in Explorer - you will get an error message about the path being too long.

Hiding an entry (or a "fin the registry

I'm trying to hide some values in the registry (such as serial numbers) with C++/windows
so I've been looking at this article http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/NtRegistry.aspx
which says:
How is this possible? The answer is
that a name which is a counted as a
Unicode string can explicitly include
NULL characters (0) as part of the
name. For example, "Key\0". To include
the NULL at the end, the length of the
Unicode string is specified as 4.
There is absolutely no way to specify
this name using the Win32 API since if
"Key\0" is passed as a name, the API
will determine that the name is "Key"
(3 characters in length) because the
"\0" indicates the end of the name.
When a key (or any other object with a
name such as a named Event, Semaphore,
or Mutex) is created with such a name,
any application using the Win32 API
will be unable to open the name, even
though they might seem to see it.
so I tried doing something similar:
HKEY keyHandle;
PHKEY key;
unsigned long status = 0;
wchar_t *wKeyName = new wchar_t[m_keyLength];
MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, 0, m_keyName, m_keyLength, wKeyName, m_keyLength);
wKeyName[18] = '\0';
long result = RegCreateKeyExW(HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,
wKeyName,
0,
NULL,
0,
KEY_ALL_ACCESS,
NULL,
&keyHandle,
&status);
where m_keyName is the ASCII text and wKeyName is the wide char text, but in regedit I see that it is treated the same and the key is just cut where I put the '\0'.
what is wrong with it?
The problem is that you are using the Win32 API and not the NT Native API. There is a table about 1/2 way through the article that you referenced that contains the list of Native APIs. For example, you would use NtCreateKey or ZwCreateKey instead of RegCreateKeyExW. The Win32 API assumes that alls strings are terminated by a NUL character whereas the Native API counterparts use a UNICODE_STRING structure for the name.
I'll take a stab in the dark, as I have never tried to do this.
It appears that you are using the wrong function to create your registry key. You should be using the NtCreateKey method because RegCreateKeyEx[AW] will notice your '\0' and chop off past it.
Why not use the class provided in the example? It provides a method called CreateHiddenKey. To use it, simply call SetKey before it. It would be much cleaner.

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