Question

I use the __FILE__ macro for error messages. However, sometimes the path comes back as E:\x\y\/z.ext. It does this for specific files.

For example, E:\programming\v2\wwwindowclass.h comes back as E:\programming\v2\/wwwindowclass.h and E:\programming\v2\test.cpp comes back as E:\programming\v2\test.cpp. In fact, the only file in the directory that works seems to be test.cpp.

To work around this, I used jmucchiello’s answer to this question to replace any occurrence of “/” with “\”. This worked fine, and the displayed path changed to a normal one.

The problem was when I tried it on Windows 7 (after using XP). The string came up as (null) after calling the function.

Along with this, I sometimes get some seemingly random error 2: File not found errors. I’m unsure of whether this is related at all, but if there’s an explanation, it would be nice to hear.

I’ve tried to find why __FILE__ would be returning the wrong string, but to no avail. I’m using GNU g++ 4.6.1. I’m not actually sure yet if the paths that were wrong in XP were wrong in Windows 7 too. Any insight is appreciated.

Answer 1

As per MSalters’s comment:

Typically, the compiler does so when you pass #include "v2/wwwindowclass.h" to the compiler. 
Since every file has its own include statements, you can (but shouldn't) mix the two styles.

This was the case. My compiler automatically adds a forward slash.