Aliasing Long Paths to Short Paths

I need to convert a long file name eg. "c:\This is a long\Path that needs to be converted to\an 8.3 format\my file.txt"

It would look something like this:

"c:\thisis~1\Pathth~1\needst~1\an83fo~1\myfile.txt"


I am aware of "GetShortPath" API call but it does not fit my purposes.

Is there any existing solution, or must i create my own?

What does the GetShortPath API lack that makes it unfit for you?

It doesnt work for files that dont exist.

I am using M$ unsupported LogParser.dll to Export some IIS logs to XML and display them on a website, this works fine unless you use a path that has a space in it because the engine assumes the file name ends when there is a space. I need to provide both the input and the output paths in MSDOS 8.3 Format.

Hmm, an interesting question.

One problem is that if you have 2 similar directories like

C:\Venerable Bede's files\
C:\Venerable Bede's stuff\

You will get

C:\Venera~1\
C:\Venera~2\

So you have to check for that.

Assuming that your folder is pretty unique, you can do the following>

1. take the long path and use string.split() to chop it up using "\" as the delimiter.

2. for each foldername in the new array remove all spaces from the name and then discard everything after the first 6 characters. (You will have to treat the drive letter and file extension separately)

3. append "~1" to the end of each foldername (where appropriate).

4. string.join() them back together again and you should have something resembling what you want.

This is just of the top of my head of course, it might be a bit more complicated than that.

I'll look into it.