What does 'Warning: Symbol "faHidden" is not portable' mean exactly? I’m using it with FindFirst and FindNext, I'm just wondering if there is a better way of getting directory information that includes hidden and excludes hidden files in a better way that would not generate this warning. The Fact that there is a warning about it indicates to me that there must be a better way.

James

what OS? some OSes do not have hidden attribute like DOS and winwhatever... for example, on most *nix, they use dot files which are generally specifically not listed unless special steps are taken to show them... a "dot file" is one that the filename starts with a dot...

eg: .dirindex

I'm using Windows 10, but I may in the future want to make a Linux version of my program. I guess that's what the warning is about.. that fAHidden won't detect hidden files on some operating systems?

James

James Richters wrote

what OS? some OSes do not have hidden attribute like DOS and winwhatever... for example, on most *nix, they use dot files which are

Both MS-DOS and Windows have hidden file attribute bits.

g.

James Richters schrieb am Fr., 19. Juli
2019, 19:32:

I'm using Windows 10, but I may in the future want to make a Linux version of my program. I guess that's what the warning is about.. that fAHidden won't detect hidden files on some operating systems?

Correct.

Regards,
Sven

Il 19/07/2019 19:32, James Richters ha scritto:

I'm using Windows 10, but I may in the future want to make a Linux version of my program. I guess that's what the warning is about.. that fAHidden won't detect hidden files on some operating systems?

More exactly it means that fAHidden won't detect a hidden file in any OS, except Windows (and DOS if you care about).

It means File Attribute = Hidden, and only Microsoft has the Hidden flag among the file attributes.
A file in Linux is hidden if the first character of its name is a dot. If you want to make a file hidden, or make visible a hidden file, you must rename it. But this visibility rule applies only to POSIX human interface applications. If you programmatically read a directory, you always get all files.

If your goal is to get all files of a directory, hidden or not, then you need fAHidden only for Windows, because the fpc procedures will get all of them under Linux.

If your goal is to tell apart hidden files from visible ones then you must use platform specific ifdef's, using fAHidden for Windows, and checking for the first character of the name under Linux (or UNIX, because all Unices follow the same rule).

Hope that it helps,

Giuliano

right... i was specifically pointing out that *nix does not have those attributes and so faHidden is apparently not portable to them... my wording could have possibly been a bit clearer... sorry...

I appreciate the explanation it makes sense to me now. James

My apologies - I completely mis-read your statement. My fault. :)

g.