[fpc-pascal] mciSendString with long file names

[James Richters]

Sorry for the confusion.   Let me clarify:

The freepasal program is always run on a Windows system,  mciSendString is a Windows function.  I've seen solutions for this problem that use the NTFS 8.3 Short file name... Which I thought would work, but, for my application it won't work because the file is being loaded off a network drive, and the SERVER for the file is a Linux server.. but even though it's a Linux server, the path on my windows system is still uses backslashes not forward slashes... It's a FreeNAS server with Windows file sharing.  Anyway the point was that only windows NTFS formatted drives have the short file name.. so that solution won't work at all.  I want the program to be able to play the sound file no matter where the file is stored on the network or on a flash drive or a ramdrive.. etc,  and not have a requirement that it is an NTFS drive.

So it has to work with windows paths.  Almost all windows applications just put it in quotes, but mciSendString does not play nice.  I think it was invented during 8.3 limitations and it was only hacked to kind of work with long file names.. not really work properly.  The Alias method does work, but it's not so convenient for Asynchronous mode because it leaves the file open.. if you close it before it finishes playing, it stops and if you wait for it to finish and then close it.. well, that's just not asynchronous.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: fpc-pascal <fpc-pascal-bounces at lists.freepascal.org> On Behalf Of Travis Siegel via fpc-pascal
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2022 3:27 PM
To: james at productionautomation.net; FPC-Pascal users discussions <fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org>
Cc: Travis Siegel <tsiegel at softcon.com>; James Richters <james.richters at productionautomation.net>
Subject: Re: [fpc-pascal] mciSendString with long file names

That's on windows, you said the program was running on linux.  In that case, backslashes will escape the spaces, allowing the path to be found properly.

Windows paths are different, as mentioned before, they can be escaped too, but the character is different.

On 9/22/2022 2:57 PM, James Richters via fpc-pascal wrote:
> Won’t backslashes before each space be defining a subdirectory?
>
> If my path looks like:
> C:\Program Files\My Program\Some File.MP3 I don't see how changing it 
> to:
> C:\Program\ Files\My\ Progam\Some\ File.MP3 can possibly work.. it's just butchering the path.
>
> James
>
>
> From: fpc-pascal <fpc-pascal-bounces at lists.freepascal.org> On Behalf 
> Of Travis Siegel via fpc-pascal
> Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2022 4:15 PM
> To: FPC-Pascal users discussions <fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org>
> Cc: Travis Siegel <tsiegel at softcon.com>; Jean SUZINEAU 
> <jean.suzineau at wanadoo.fr>
> Subject: Re: [fpc-pascal] mciSendString with long file names
>
> Adding a backslash (\) before each space should do the job nicely.  I have had similar issues on linux and windows with some commands, and adding the escape characters to the filename almost always fixes the problem.  The only time it didn't, was when the filename started with a dash "-" character.  Otherwise, the backslash always works for me.
>
> On 9/20/2022 4:16 PM, Jean SUZINEAU via fpc-pascal wrote:
> May be by escaping the spaces with ^ ?
> Something like:  MyFileName:= StringReplace(MyFileName, ' ', '^ ', 
> [rfReplaceAll]); ^ is the escape char for cmd.exe but may be it is active in this context too ?
> Le 20/09/2022 à 18:31, James Richters via fpc-pascal a écrit :
> I just tried it that way:
> Var
> pcmd: String;
> MyFileName: String;
>   
> pcmd:='play "'+MyFileName+'"'+#0;
> mciSendString(@pcmd[1],Nil,0,0);
>   
>
>
>
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