Rights to write in Programs folder

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Thu Dec 22 13:44:31 EST 2005


David Glasgow wrote:
> 
> I was just reading Sarah Reichelt's tutorial on saving data.
> 
> http://www.revjournal.com/tutorials/saving_data_in_revolution.html
> 
> I have always saved data to stack in a subfolder of the standalone 
> containing folder.  Of this she says:
> 
> "this may cause problems if the application is stored in the 
> Applications or Program Files folder and the user does not have write 
> access to that folder."
> 
> She is of course quite correct.  I have had some problems with this, and 
> the error reporting by Rev and customers  seemed a bit hit and miss.  
> Can anyone tell me what Rev and Windows does if an attempt is made to 
> write to a location for which the user does not have the necessary 
> privileges.  I have had described to me three different things:
> 
> 1/ An endlessly busy cursor.
> 2/ Absolutely no indication that anything has gone wrong (but no data 
> saved)
> 3/  An error report that the path was not "available"  (?)
> 
> Is this a case for using 'try throw catch' at startup to pre-empt 
> problems later?  If so, what might the script look like?
> 
> I would prefer to stick to the subfolder data saving method - unless 
> anyone can persuade me that there is a much better way to go.

I haven't yet had time to test this, but it should be simple enough on 
either OS X or Windows by just creating an account that doesn't have 
sufficient privileges to write to the Program Files (Win) or 
Applications (OS X) folders.

If memory serves, attempting to write to a folder where you don't have 
sufficient permissions will cause the result to contain "can't open file".

On some OSes you can then call the sysError function to determine 
further specifics if necessary, but since you've already determined the 
critical factor (that you can't write the file) you may not need to.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com



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