Extracting File & Folder Information from MicroStation^® Configuration Variables

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Q How do I extract file and folder information from a configuration variable?

A MicroStation uses configuration variables (CfgVars) to specify, amongst other things, locations for files. CfgVars are defined in the configuration files specified for your MicroStation workspace. These may include a user workspace (.ucf file), project workspace (.pcf file), or one of the many plain old configuration (.cfg) files used when customising your MicroStation environment.

Here's an example of a CfgVar defined as a folder …

MS_SETTINGSDIR = v:/projects/data/MicroStation/settings/

And another CfgVar that defines a file in that folder …

#   Next line expands to
#   v:/projects/data/MicroStation/settings/data.dat
DATA_FILE = $(MS_SETTINGSDIR)data.dat

There are a number of functions relating to configuration file & folder parsing. They are documented in the MicroStation Administrator's Guide in the section Configuration Variable File Syntax. Suppose, for whatever reason, I want to extract the folder or file name from the DATA_FILE CfgVar. I can use the special configuration file operators parentdevdir() and filename() like this …

#   Next line extracts
#   v:/projects/data/MicroStation/settings/
FOLDER   = $(parentdevdir (DATA_FILE))

#   Next line extracts
#   data.dat
FILENAME = $(filename (DATA_FILE))

However, not all the functions made it as far as the documentation in MicroStation V8: two functions, firstdirpiece() and lastdirpiece(), were omitted. However, they are mentioned in this MicroStation/J Technote (#8160). You can use these to extract respectively the first folder in a path and the last folder in a path …

#   Next line expands to
#   projects
TOP_LEVEL_DIR = $(firstdirpiece (DATA_FILE))

#   Next line expands to
#   settings
BOTTOM_LEVEL_DIR = $(lastdirpiece (DATA_FILE))

Questions similar to this pop up regularly on the Bentley Discussion Groups.

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Updated on 07-Apr-08

Extracting File & Folder Information from MicroStation® Configuration Variables

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Extracting File & Folder Information from MicroStation^® Configuration Variables