path encoding folder

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

Hi Monks!

I am struggling with the following piece of code. My need: selecting a directory (possibly with UTF characters) and save a text file. This piece of code creates a folder and put inside it the file. How can I prevent the creation of the folder (this is the part I found on the web)? I just took away the "unless" part of the code, but if doing so, the script is no longer able to write in a folder with UTF characters! What am I missing? Thanks. Cla

use Tk;
use strict;
use warnings;

use Encode qw( encode );
use File::Slurp;
use File::Spec::Functions qw( catfile );
use Win32;
use Win32::API;

use constant ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS => 0xb7;

my $mw = MainWindow->new;
$mw->title('Menu');
my $menubar = $mw->Menu(-type => 'menubar');
$mw->configure(-menu => $menubar);
my $mfile = $menubar->cascade(-label => '~File', -tearoff => 0);
 
$mfile->command(-label => '~Save',
                -command => \&save_file4);                
                              
my $exit = $mw->Button(-text => 'Exit',
                       -command => [$mw => 'destroy']);

$exit->pack;
my $types = [ ['HTML files', '.txt'],
              ['All Files',   '*'],];
MainLoop;
sub save_file4 {
  my $save = $mw->getSaveFile(-filetypes => $types, 
                             -initialfile => 'test',
                             -defaultextension => '.txt');

unless ( Win32::CreateDirectory($save) ) {
    my $err = $^E;
    if ( $err == ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS ) {
        warn "Directory exists, no problem\n";
    }
    else {
        die Win32::FormatMessage($^E);
    }
}

my $ansi_path = Win32::GetANSIPathName($save);
warn "$ansi_path\n";

my $file = catfile($ansi_path, 'test.txt');
  open(OUT,">$file") or die $!;
  print OUT $file;
  close OUT;  
}
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Re: path encoding folder by moritz (Cardinal) on Nov 19, 2010 at 15:11 UTC
the script is no longer able to write in a folder with UTF characters! What happens if you try? Does your computer burst into flames? Or do you get an error message? if so, what does it say? Perl 6 - second systems done right	[reply]
Re^2: path encoding folder by fanticla (Scribe) on Nov 19, 2010 at 15:23 UTC
with the script as above, it works fine (create new folder, even with "UTF characters", and write in it the text file). Without the "unless" code, I get the error: TK::Error: No such file or directory at open(OUT,">$file") or die $!;	[reply]
Re: path encoding folder by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 19, 2010 at 15:43 UTC
Could you add use Devel::Peek; Dump($save); Dump($ansi_path); print(STDERR `chcp`); [download] where the `warn` is located and provide the output please? (I'm away from my Windows box at the moment.)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: path encoding folder by fanticla (Scribe) on Nov 19, 2010 at 16:23 UTC
C:\Documents and Settings\FC\Desktop>perl script.pl SV = PV(0x2e33e00) at 0x2d70c60 REFCNT = 1 FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,POK,pPOK,UTF8) PV = 0x2e52784 "C:/Documents and Settings/FC/Desktop/\303\274/test.t +xt"\0 [UTF 8 "C:/Documents and Settings/FC/Desktop/\x{fc}/test.txt"] CUR = 48 LEN = 52 SV = PV(0x2e33cf8) at 0x2d70d08 REFCNT = 1 FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,POK,pPOK) PV = 0x2e58004 "C:/Documents and Settings/FC/Desktop/\374/test.txt"\ +0 CUR = 47 LEN = 48 Tabella codici attiva: 850 Tk::Error: No such file or directory at a.pl line 44. (menu invoke) [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: path encoding folder by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 19, 2010 at 19:31 UTC
`getSaveFile` appears to return the file name as decoded text. `CreateDirectory` expects decoded text according to the documentation, so that's good. As for `open`, it (more or less) expects text encoded using the current locale (unix) or ANSI code page (Windows). `GetANSIPathName` is there to do that conversion. I was trying to use `chcp` to figure out what's your code page, but it returns the OEM code page. We're interested in the ANSI one. Your ANSI code page is probably cp1252 (a superset of iso-8859-1). The output you gave shows that `.../ü/test.txt` gets properly encoded to cp1252, so everything is fine on the encoding side. The output you gave also shows that you are trying to create file `.../Desktop/ü/test.txt/test.txt` since you append `test.txt` to the displayed value. (Note the double "`test.txt`".) I'm guessing directory `.../Desktop/ü/test.txt` doesn't exist (though I don't know why `CreateDirectory` didn't given an error when it didn't create it). The problem is that you're using the file path as the directory path. That's why it's always a good idea to include the file name in error messages for `open`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]