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Ingo Foerster

asked on

Create a path if not exists

How can I manage to force create a full path in Delphi?

Sample: D:\Part1\Part2\Part3\Part4\

Function willl check if path exists. If not exists it have to create the path.
I think about a function that will check each folder whether it exists and if not it will create it until it reach the top folder.

I know how to do this in C++ but how to manage this in Delphi?
Avatar of Evan Cutler
Evan Cutler
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two options:


ForceDirectories('D:\Part1\Part2\Part3\Part4\');


or

if not DirectoryExists('c:\test') then
begin
CreateDir('C:\test');
end;
Avatar of Ingo Foerster
Ingo Foerster

ASKER

ok, I understand. But because I will not work on the file system with the function, I will work on a own file tree I wanted to now how to read each folder out of the path in Delphi

In C++ I use:

DWORD ChkCreateDir(const std::wstring &path)
{
    std::wstring wildCard = path;
    wchar_t acDir[MAX_PATH];
    wchar_t* pc = NULL;
    DWORD dwAtt = -1;

	//Check if the path contains Backslash
	if ( wildCard[wildCard.size() - 1] == L'\\' )
	{
		wildCard = wildCard.substr( 0, wildCard.size( ) - 1 );
	}


    dwAtt = GetFileAttributes (wildCard.c_str());

	if(dwAtt != INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES){
		if((dwAtt & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) == FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
			return (dwAtt);
	}

    //if(FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY == dwAtt)
		//return (dwAtt);
    //if(dwAtt & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
		//return (dwAtt);

    wcscpy(acDir, wildCard.c_str());

    pc = wcsrchr(acDir, L'\\');

    if(pc)
		*pc = (wchar_t) 0;
    else
		return (0xffffffff);

    dwAtt = ChkCreateDir(acDir);

    if((dwAtt & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) == FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
    {
		if(!CreateDirectory(wildCard.c_str(), NULL))
		{
			//ErrorExit(L"ChkCreateDir",L""); 
			return GetLastError();
		}

		return (dwAtt);
    }

    return (0);
}

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I think I have to write a own ForceDirectory function because it is not a common file tree.
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Avatar of Ferruccio Accalai
Ferruccio Accalai
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I will not work on the file system with the function, I will work on a own file tree I wanted to now how to read each folder out of the path in Delphi
does that mean you actually don't want to create the folders as askd in the op?

if you only want to parse the path, you may use TStrings DelimitedText

procedure Split(Delimiter: Char; Str: string; ListOfStrings: TStrings) ;
begin
   ListOfStrings.Clear;
   ListOfStrings.Delimiter       := Delimiter;
   ListOfStrings.StrictDelimiter := True; 
   ListOfStrings.DelimitedText   := Str;
end;

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you will find this and other code samples if you search for Delphi and DelimitedText.

Sara
you have an own tree structure for directory paths on a windows system which does not follow the windows filing system ?

and how does windows find your files then ?
Please understand that Windows is just a small piece of the world. There are some open file systems for disks as example, like UDF. For this UDF authoring I need to write a virtual file sytsme (tree) to place the files well and work with sorting feature and to follow some special specifications.
So this is not a Windows nor macOS or Linux, it is a virtual file system where windows special functions will not work.

However, I have found that the ForceDirectories code is open source and I was able to rewrite the code in the case I need. Just replaced with CreateDir and DirExists of my own file system objects and it work well.
ForceDirectories was right because I was able to find this in opensource and rewrite the function to my needs.