Library tutorials & articles

Getting System Folders Easily via API

By Thushan Fernando, published on 21 Jun 2002
Thushan Fernando Currently I'm working at Hammond Street Developments Pty Ltd. My time on DeveloperFusion is limited due to workloads, I do however keep a Blog that gets updated fairly regularly with lots of Techno...
Page 3 of 5
  1. Introduction
  2. Windoze Directory
  3. System Directory
  4. Temporary Directory
  5. Finally...

System Directory

The most important of all directories in my opinion is the System Directory. Its vital that you dont simply use "C:\Windows\System32" or something like that if you want to get your application to work in all platforms.

So heres another snippet for your enjoyment:

Option Explicit
Private Declare Function GetSystemDirectoryB Lib "kernel32" Alias "GetSystemDirectoryA" (ByVal Path As String, ByVal cbBytes As Long) As Long
Private Const MAX_LENGTH = 512

Public Function GetWindowsSystemDirectory() As String
   Dim s As String
   Dim c As Long
   s = String$(MAX_LENGTH, 0)
   c = GetSystemDirectoryB(s, MAX_LENGTH)
   If c > 0 Then
       If c > Len(s) Then
           s = Space$(c + 1)
           c = GetSystemDirectoryB(s, MAX_LENGTH)
       End If
   End If
   GetWindowsSystemDirectory = IIf(c > 0, Left$(s, c), "")
End Function

So going back to our example used before, to read say the oohhhhh so important EULA from Microsoft for your Windoze operating system:

   Dim iFileNum As Integer
   Dim strEULA as string
   iFileNum = FreeFile
   Open GetWindowsSystemDirectory& "eula.txt" For Input As iFileNum
   strEULA = Input$(LOF(iFileNum), iFileNum)
   Close #iFileNum
   msgbox strEULA, vbCritical, "UnImportant Aggreement"

Click 'Next>>' and dont collect the $100...

Related tags

visual basic

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!

  6. Developer Fusion Bot
    01 Jan 1999 at 00:00

    This thread is for discussions of Getting System Folders Easily via API.

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