OT: How does Windows handle spaces in program names?

[Mike Bonner]

Try
"my\ spacious\ program.exe"

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 3:27 PM, Graham Samuel <livfoss at mac.com> wrote:

> Again thanks to all who replied. I'm trying to do the things that Mike and
> Ken have suggested, but meanwhile for Björnke, I am not sure what escape
> involves in Windows - I assume there is an escape character or character
> pair... and as to quoting in file names, where Mike had
>
> "firefox.exe"
>
> (including the quotes)
>
> I tried "My spacious program.exe" since I couldn't see how to introduce a
> further level of quotes.
>
> As I said, I don't know much about Windows.
>
> Am trying other suggestions and will report back.
>
> Graham
>
> On Sun, 22 May 2011 19:55:05 +0200 Bj?rnke von Gierke <bvg at mac.com> wrote:
>
> > you need to quote or escape spaces. That was suggested and people
> succesfully tested it on their own setup.
> >
> > What exactly did you try to quote the filenames, or escape the spaces?
> >
> > On 22 May 2011, at 19:51, Graham Samuel wrote:
> >
> >> Excuse me for repeating myself, but I put the essentials of this message
> to the list already under another subject heading - this one reflects what
> I'm really trying to find out.
> >>
> >> Mike Bonner has been helping me on this list with a little VB script
> that launches a Windows program from within a LiveCode standalone cleverly
> enough to avoid multiple instances. As an example, he wrote a script that
> launches Firefox. One of the lines looked like this:
> >>
> >> WshShell.Run "firefox.exe"
> >>
> >> I was able to make this work, and to show that it works with **any**
> program on the PC that doesn't have a space in its name - you just have to
> replace 'firefox' with the new program name. But it doesn't work if the name
> contains a space, and I have to invoke just such a program. This prog
> already has thousands of users, so I can't change the name to avoid the
> problem.
> >>
> >> The question is, what is happening when the launch fails, apart from a
> VB error (to the effect that it can't find the file, but it doesn't tell me
> the name of the file it can't find, which may be a clue). I just don't know
> how to track down the error or how to avoid it - maybe I have to substitute
> something for the space character, or maybe there is a shadow name that I
> can't see... I am hoping a Windows / VB savvy person can help me.
> >>
> >> It would be helpful of course if I could see the process list in the PC
> - then I could launch the prog from outside my LC app and just look at the
> list to see what Windows calls it, but I don't know how to do that on XP
> since 'tasklist' isn't recognised and I don't know how to display things
> from a VB script. It's sad to be so ignorant, but the charm of LiveCode is
> that you don't normally have to know this kind of stuff about your target
> OS.
> >>
> >> Any help greatly appreciated.
>
> >
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