Minor gotcha when importing a macro from USB drive?

[terrypin]

I needed to get a macro I wrote yesterday on my ancient shed workshop PC to this Win 10 PC in my house office. I exported it to a USB stick where it was called

M:\\AttributeChangeDateFromShed.mex

 

Surprisingly it failed, giving the message "The filename is not valid."

 

After some experiment I discovered that it works OK if I placed the file instead in

M:\From Shed\AttributeChangeDateFromShed.mex

 

So looks like it only fails if placed at the root level.

 

[acantor]

Hi Terry,

 

I tried to replicate this problem of importing macros via a USB stick, but was unable to.

 

I also chose AttributeChangeDateFromShed.mex as the name of the file.

[terrypin]

Thanks for testing anyway Alan; very puzzling!

 

 

[Samrae]

This is not a valid file path:

On 11/27/2020 at 4:27 AM, terrypin said:

M:\\AttributeChangeDateFromShed.mex

 

Try this instead:

M:\AttributeChangeDateFromShed.mex

 

[terrypin]

Thanks @Samrae, you've solved the puzzle. I use a 15 or 20 year old hotkey macro to place the full path and filename of any selected File Explorer file onto the clipboard. That turns out to be the cause of the inconsistency. It had a few lines built in to handle files in the root which otherwise misbehaved:

 

If Variable %tFolder% Equals "C:\"
  Variable Modify String: Replace "\" in %tFolder% with ""
End If

 

But C was the only root for which I'd eliminated the double '\\' . Looks like I've never before used the macro on any other, or if I did it never caused trouble!

 

[acantor]

Hi Terry,

 

Glad you sorted it out. Your example is instructive, and illustrative. Once every blue moon, I discover a macro, created eons ago and proven reliable through hundreds or thousands of repetitions, begins to fail or misbehave.

 

A review of the code sometimes reveals things that nobody could have anticipated, e.g., a software maker changed a default hotkey or the title bar text.

 

And sometimes a code review exposes embarrassing things about my earlier conceptions of how to best use Macro Express!

[Samrae]

21 hours ago, terrypin said:

Thanks @Samrae, you've solved the puzzle

 

If Variable %tFolder% Equals "C:\"
  Variable Modify String: Replace "\" in %tFolder% with ""
End If

 

 

 

You're welcome. Perhaps you could add something like this:

Variable Modify String: Replace ":\\" in %tFolder% with ":\"