I'm trying to pass paths that are folder names and that may contain non-ANSI characters to external commands in Windows. I've tried both Win32::GetANSIPathName and Win32::LongPath::shortpathL. The former seems to always return the original path and the latter seems to always return an empty string. What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

use v5.16;
use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32 ();
use Win32::Console ();
use Win32::LongPath qw(shortpathL);

Win32::Console::OutputCP(65001); # Request Windows console command out
+put in UTF-8  
my $top = shift;

foreach my $foldername ( map { chomp $_; $_ } qx(dir /b /a:d "$top") )
+ {
    my $path = "$top\\$foldername";
    test( "GetANSIPathName", $path, Win32::GetANSIPathName("$path") );
    test( "shortpathL", $path, shortpathL($path) );
}

sub test {
    my ($name, $path, $testpath) = @_;
    my @report = qx(robocopy /njh /nfl /ndl /np /l /s "$testpath" "x:\
+\nodir");
    print( qq($name path "$testpath" didn't work for "$path"\n) )
        unless grep(/^ *Bytes/, @report);
}

[download]

In reply to How to pass a folder name to Windows external commands? by freonpsandoz

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.