Other FSO Methods and Properties

The base FSO object offers a few other useful methods and properties that you may need from time to time.

The first is the BuildPath function. It accepts components of a file or folder path and appends them together. Normally, you could do that with the simple & concatenation operator, but BuildPath actually worries about getting backslashes in the right place. So, consider this example:

Dim sFolder, sFile

sFolder = "C:\Windows"

sFile = "MyFile.exe"



Dim oFSO

Set oFSO = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

MsgBox sFolder & sFile

MsgBox oFSO.BuildPath(sFolder,sFile)

The first message box displays "C:\WindowsMyFile.exe", which isn't right-it is missing the backslash in the middle. The second message box, which uses BuildPath, displays the correct "C:\Windows\MyFile.exe" because the BuildPath function figured out that a backslash was necessary.

While working with paths, you may also have a need to get the absolute or base path name, and the FSO's GetAbsolutePathName and GetBaseName methods will do it for you. Here's an example.

Dim oFSO, sPath1, sPath2

Set oFSO = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

sPath1 = "C:\Windows\System32\Scrrun.dll"

sPath2 = "..\My Documents\Files"



MsgBox oFSO.GetAbsolutePathName(sPath1)

MsgBox oFSO.GetAbsolutePathName(sPath2)



MsgBox oFSO.GetBaseName(sPath1)

MsgBox oFSO.GetBaseName(sPath2)

The result of this is four message boxes.

• "C:\Windows\System32\Scrrun.dll": There's no difference between the input and output, because the input in this case is already a complete, unambiguous path.

• "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Files": This is an example output you might see. The difference is that the path has been resolved into a complete, final path starting at the root of the drive.

• "Scrrun": This is the base name of the last component in the input, without any file extension.

• "Files": Again, this is the base name of the last component, although in this case it's a folder instead of a file.

Finally, there's GetTempName. If you need to create a temporary file or folder, especially within the system's temporary files folder, it's important that you use a filename that other applications won't already be using. GetTempName simply makes up a filename that is unique, allowing you to create your temp file with confidence.