problem with mounted share (MS Windows)

momo33 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Perlmonks,

I use Tk to select some files and directories. This works fine in most situations. Unfortunately, it fails with mounted shares (MS Windows). Selecting a file with getOpenFile generally works, but chooseDirectory always fails.

my $dirname=getcwd;
my $f = $mw->getOpenFile(-filetypes => $dtype,
                         -initialdir => $dirname);
my $d = $mw->chooseDirectory( -initialdir => $dirname);

$dirname looks like: //machine123/myshare$/report/data/01/
[download]

getOpenFile generally opens the correct directory, chooseDirectory opens mydocuments.
Does anyone know what causes this?

Thank you

Comment on problem with mounted share (MS Windows) Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by rovf (Priest) on Sep 25, 2008 at 08:12 UTC
Just a wild guess: Are you using UNC pathes for $dirname? If yes, does it work if you use drive letters instead? -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply]
Re^2: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by momo33 (Beadle) on Sep 25, 2008 at 08:28 UTC
Your guess was right: the paths are UNC. Unfortunately drive letters are not an option. Do you have any suggestions? Just to be clear, the path looks like: //machine123/myshare$/report/data/01/	[reply]
Re^3: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by rovf (Priest) on Sep 25, 2008 at 10:48 UTC
Unfortunately drive letters are not an option. Just to make sure that it is really the UNC path which causes griefs: Could you at least try in a test run to use drive letters instead, so that you can confirm the cause? I don't know what Tk is doing internally so that your call fails. UNC pathes are OK in most cases, but here are two exceptions I know, which don't work with UNC pathes: If you use the Cygwin version of Perl, or if you set on the command line the "default drive" to a UNC path (which doesn't seem to apply in your case). But of course there might be other issues I'm not aware of. -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply]
Re: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 25, 2008 at 12:01 UTC
Does anyone know what causes this? Probably because Tk doesn't understand UNC pathnames. Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."	[reply]
Re^2: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by rovf (Priest) on Sep 25, 2008 at 14:02 UTC
Probably because Tk doesn't understand UNC pathnames. Or, rather, it Tk requires to use \\ instead of // in UNC pathes? Did you try to replace the forward slashes by backslashes? -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply]
Re^3: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by momo33 (Beadle) on Sep 26, 2008 at 06:06 UTC
I tried replacing / by \, but this is very tricky. It caused more problems than it solved. The path is provided by getcwd. Can I convert this into something Tk allways handles correctly?	[reply]
Re^4: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by rovf (Priest) on Sep 26, 2008 at 08:48 UTC
Re: problem with mounted share (MS Windows) by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 26, 2008 at 09:33 UTC
The dialog is a standard Windows (or library, I can't remember) dialog. I don't think the problem is specific to Tk, and I don't think there's anything you can do about it. It doesn't work using backslashes either.	[reply]