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1027 - What’s the deal with backslashes in Authorware?

by - Joseph Ganci

All of the sudden I can not open helpfiles or read textfiles with a program that has been the same for months but that now was packaged with 5.2. When I use bawinhelp (or whatever it's called) to open a winhelp file it says it can't find the file, and then it shows the path with one backslash too many from the filelocation variable.. the expression to open the file is Filelocation^"Help.hlp" and the path in the error-message: folder\\help.hlp Has there been any change to the Filelocation variable in version 5.2? Or anything else that can have goon bad?

I only have one installation of Aw..This is the weirdest thing at the worst of moments. Listen to this:
The thing to open helpfiles is solved, don't know how but now it's working.
But the big problem is to read in textfiles:
- when I run the file from where it's packaged it's working. It reads in thetextfiles fine. The text is read in with calc icons that are stored in a library. When I, in the packaged piece check the value of this path-variable (through an eval thing) it is correct.But when I run it from another location it is as if it does not read in the text..? Very wierd. Everything else is the same…

Ok, thanks.I've had a bunch of troubles lately. The code I am wrestling with at the moment is:
baWinHelp("Show"; FileLocation^"Help"; MatchedIconTitle)
It gives an error-message saying the correct path but with one backslash too many before the file. And when I debug filelocation (on the packaged piece) the last backslash is double and rest single. This is running under win Me.
Any tip?

The double backlash is normal if you are seeing it in the Variables window, in that the backslash character in Authorware is an "escape" character. When Authorware sees it, it checks the next character to see how to interpret the combination. \r = return character \t = tab character \\ = 1 backslash character. When shown on the screen, though, each backslash should be single. What's puzzling is that all the other slashes are single. On my machine, which is running Win98, each backslash in FileLocation is doubled in the Variables window, as it should be. When displayed on the screen, though, each double backslash is singled, as it should be.

Is "Help" really the name of your file? Shouldn't it be "Help.hlp"? If it isn't really the name of your file, are you preceding it with one or more backslashes, like "\Help" or "\\Help". If so, don't.

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