PathStripPath

[formerTexan]

I am puzzled by the behavior of the Shell function PathStripPath in a VBA setting in that it merely overwrites the beginning of the string.

If I pass a string "C:\FolderABCD\File.txt" the resultant string value is:

"File.txt BCD\File.txt"

This is fortunately not a show stopper since there are alternative ways to trim off the path, but if there are any ideas as to why the behavioral oddity, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Thanks,
Bill

 

[strongm]

It isn't doing anything odd or strange. It is doing exactly what it is documented to do, which is to return a null-terminated string in the buffer you have provided. VB doesn't understand null-terminated strings (in the sense that it doesn't know that CHR(0) is a string terminator), so when you display the string it actually displays the entire original buffer, which is your original string overwritten at the beginning by the stripped filename plus a CHR(0)

So you need to extract

Left$(strResult, instr(strResult, Chr$(0))-1)

or

Split(strResult,Chr$(0))(0)

 

[formerTexan]

Thanks much Strongm. Yes indeed that return is null terminated. The API documentation was a bit ambiguous about the results and they weren't what I expected.

Since I am only looping through a few dozen paths at the most, speed isn't an issue. But I will have to see whether it is more efficient to just use VB string functions or the API call or alternatively pass a fixed length string. The fixed length string gets a cleaner result, but the tail of the string still must be clipped.

Again, I appreciate your feedback.
Cheers, Bill