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Getting System Folders Easily via API

By Thushan Fernando, published on 21 Jun 2002
Thushan Fernando Work Work Work
Currently I'm working at Vividas Pty Ltd and studying at Swinburne University. My time on DeveloperFusion is limited due to workloads on both parts, I do however keep a Blog that gets updated fairly regularly with lots of Techno-babble...

I also have a software business called WebSoftware Systems in Australia, the primary product we have at the moment is HotHTML which started life as a simple VB6 based HTML editor and is now a full blown text/web development IDE. I'm currently also working on the v4.0 release in .NET 2.0.
Page 2 of 5
  1. Introduction
  2. Windoze Directory
  3. System Directory
  4. Temporary Directory
  5. Finally...

Windoze Directory

An alternative to:

open "C:\Windows\System.ini" for input as #1
Input #1, strSomeString
Close #1

You can do this:

Open GetWindowsDirectory & "system.ini" for input as #1
Input #1, strSomeString
Close #1

So now when the users use it in say Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000(NT 5) you wont get any errors to this critical windows required file.

The code to achieve this is quite easy. Insert the below code into a module(or wait till the last section for all the code in one easy to use module).

Option Explicit
Private Declare Function GetWindowsDirectoryB Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetWindowsDirectoryA" (ByVal lpBuffer As String, ByVal nSize As Long) As Long
Private Const MAX_LENGTH = 512
Public Function GetWindowsDirectory() As String
   Dim s As String
   Dim c As Long
   s = String$(MAX_LENGTH, 0)
   c = GetWindowsDirectoryB(s, MAX_LENGTH)
   If c > 0 Then
       If c > Len(s) Then
           s = Space$(c + 1)
           c = GetWindowsDirectoryB(s, MAX_LENGTH)
       End If
   End If
   GetWindowsDirectory = IIf(c > 0, Left$(s, c), "")
End Function

This will get the windows Directory via the 'GetWindowsDirectoryA' function in the Kernel32 API.

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Comments

  1. Serge van den Oever [Macaw]
    23 Jul 2005 at 15:37

    When you need the Temp folder, the easy (and clean .Net way) is to use: Path.GetTempPath()

  2. Thushan Fernando
    30 Aug 2003 at 04:46

    it will still work for change dpaths... i used TweakXP to try it out on a few VMs and it worked fine... as far as other languaegs go... i only get English versions of OS's from MS so i dont know what the effects are, i suppose its teh same but i aint sure... amybe someone else maybe able to tell you.

  3. boygenius
    30 Aug 2003 at 01:26

    so if the user changes their dir from say C:\WinNT\System32\ to C:\WindowsNT\System Files\ would i still be able to get the Windows DIR and System DIR?


    also what about foreign languages?

  4. Thushan Fernando
    04 Jul 2002 at 10:24

    hey,


    sorry i couldnt reply earlier, I only saw my post now!


    thank-you for your kind words!

  5. MichaelMyAss
    21 Jun 2002 at 07:36

    Hey,


    I must say this is EXTREEMLY useful for a nutcase like myself!


    I infact had the exact problem you said most people have.


    Thanks alot! It really helps!

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