[Gambas-user] File & Directory Functions: PWD, cd

[Tobias Boege]

On Sun, 14 Dec 2014, Lewis Balentine wrote:
> I can find out what the current directory is with:
>      Print Application.Env["PWD"]
> 
> However there does not seem to be anything to change the present working 
> directory within the "File & Directory Functions".
> I did try using the shell function. It did not seem to have the desired 
> effect.
>        Print Application.Env["PWD"]
>        Shell ("cd /mnt/Data/videos")
>        Wait 0.1
>        Print Application.Env["PWD"]
> ----------
>      /home/lewis
>      /home/lewis
> 
> So I guess that I have missed something obvious again.

Yes, using

  Shell "cd /another/directory"

spawns a new process (the shell) which changes its directory (using the cd
built-in) to /another/directory and then dies. Since the CWD is local to a
process, this does nothing with your Gambas process.

> How does one change the current directory in a Gambas console based 
> program ?
> 

There is no concept of a current working directory in Gambas, as stated
here[0]. If you want to change the CWD of your process nevertheless, I
guess you can use Extern[1] and access the chdir() function in the C
library but I don't know what consequences that will have.

A cleaner solution is to use absolute paths throughout. The CWD from process
startup time is found in Application.Dir. If you didn't call chdir() since
then, it will give you your CWD and any relative path sRel can be made into
an absolute path via

  Application.Dir &/ sRel

Regards,
Tobi

[0] http://gambaswiki.org/wiki/lang/path
[1] http://gambaswiki.org/wiki/lang/extdecl

-- 
"There's an old saying: Don't change anything... ever!" -- Mr. Monk