Question

(Using Delphi 5)

I am attempting to open a log file using the following code:

// The result of this is:
// C:\Program Files\MyProgram\whatever\..\Blah\logs\mylog.log
fileName := ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName) + '..\Blah\logs\mylog.log';

// The file exists check passes
if (FileExists(fileName)) then
begin
    logs := TStringList.Create();

    // An exception is thrown here: 'unable to open file'
    logs.LoadFromFile(fileName);
end;

If I relocate the log file to C:\mylog.log the code works perfectly. I’m thinking that the spaces in the file path are messing things up. Does anyone know if this is normal behavior for Delphi 5? If it is, is there a function to escape the space or transform the path into a windows 8.3 path?

Answer 1

I’m pretty sure that Delphi 5 handles spaces in filenames ok but it has been a very long time since I have used that specific version. Is the file currently open by another process? It also could be a permissions issue. Can you instead of loading it into a tStringList, try opening it with a tFileStream with the filemode set to “fmOpenRead or fmShareDenyNone”.

fStm := tFileStream.Create( filename, fmOpenRead or fmShareDenyNone );

then load your tStringlist from the stream:

Logs.LoadFromStream ( fStm );