Re: Using Spawn in Win2K

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

Dave Head wrote in message ...
>Thanks.
>
>I did find CMD.  But this is going to make it more fun to produce
something
>for people with the different OS's and have it work the same...
command.com
>wants to give 8X3 filenames no matter what.  CMD does long filenames,
no
>problem, and by default too.
>
>It must be quitting time somewhere in the world...

Trying to use "spawn" to get a list of files seems like killing a flea
with a cannon. And, as you've found out, its not in the least portable
(even to different versions of windows). There are lots of good uses for
Spawn (or 'Prog_Call' as it is called in Janus/Ada, ...), but this isn't
one of them.

If you need to find a list of information about files in a directory,
you are best off using a package designed for the purpose. The first
choice would be Ada.Directories, but it probably will be a few years
before that is generally available. But there are a lot of other choices
available:

-- Claw.Directories: Windows-specific. Works on any Ada compiler for
Windows. (But it is tied into Claw, so if you're using a different GUI,
or no GUI, it may be a bad choice.)

-- Compiler-specific:
   Gnat.Directories: Gnat-specific. Works (supposedly) on any Gnat
supported OS. Every other Ada compiler has such a library as well.

You also could use Florist or other of the other OS-interface packages.

Any of these choices would be less platform-specific than using Spawn.

            Randy Brukardt.