Question

I’m using Delphi 2010 on Windows 7 and have a problem with single quotes doubling while searching a directory recursively.

This is my code that searches for directories.

  if FindFirst(aPath + '*', faDirectory, sr) = 0 then
    try
      repeat
        if  (sr.Name <> '.') and (sr.Name <> '..') then
          if (sr.Attr and faDirectory) = faDirectory then
            SearchFolderEx(aPath + sr.Name + '\', aSearchMasks);

      until FindNext(sr) <> 0;
    finally
      FindClose(sr);
    end;

Now with a path like this (starting at “C:\New folder\”)

C:\New folder\New Folder's\New Text Document.txt

FindFirst/FindeNext doubles the single quote

'New Folder''s'

and FindData.cFileName from the TSearchRec looks like this

('N', 'e', 'w', ' ', 'F', 'o', 'l', 'd', 'e', 'r', '''', 's', #0, #0, ...)

where could be the problem and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

There’s no problem here and nothing needs to be fixed. The ' is the string delimiter and is simply escaped for representation as ''. When the debugger shows you '' in a string, that’s just its way of representing a single quote character.

The documentation covers this topic here: Character Strings.

So,

''''

is a string of length 1 whose single element is the quote symbol.

Likewise

'New Folder''s'

is a Delphi string literal defining the string

New Folder's

The debugger shows you the contents of the variable using the same rules as are used for string literals.