Use wildcard for folders in file_find_first()?

[Zappy]

I'm trying to make something where I'd like to find every folder that contains a file called "File.ini". This is basically the script that I'm using:

var _result=0;
if file_find_first(working_directory+"Folder\*\File.ini",0)!=""
{
    _result=1;
    while file_find_next()!=""
        _result+=1;
}
file_find_close();
return _result;

In working_directory, I have a folder called "Folder", and inside of that, I have a folder called "Subfolder" and another called "Subfolder2", both of which have "File.ini" within them.

But yet, the above script returns 0, not 2. If I change the file-path stuff of file_find_first to working_directory+"Folder\Subfolder\File.ini" or working_directory+"Folder\Subfolder\*.ini", however, it will return 1, so the issue is with the wildcard (*) being unsupported in folder names.

Is there a proper way to use wildcards in folder names?

[The Winter Bud]

from my research, only the file name can use the wildcard symbol. As in the example the Documentation gives under directory_exists(filename)[docs.yoyogames.com]

if directory_exists(working_directory + "\Saves\")
   {
   file = file_find_first(working_directory + "\Saves\*.doc", fa_readonly);
   }

[The Winter Bud]

If you know ahead of time what subdirectories you have you could store subfolder names in a list and then iterate through the list

// assuming you addes all subfolder names to a ds_list called folderList
var _result=0;
for(var nameIndex=0;nameIndex<ds_list_size(folderList);nameIndex++){
  if file_find_first(working_directory+
         "Folder\"+
         ds_list_find_value(folderList,nameIndex)+
         "\File.ini",0)!=""
  {
    _result=1;
    while file_find_next()!=""
        _result+=1;
  }
}
file_find_close();
return _result;

[Zappy]

Originally posted by The Winter Bud:

If you know ahead of time what subdirectories -

Sadly, I don't; The whole point was that there could be as many arbitrarily-named folders as wanted.

I'm not going to be storing that many files per folder (like, usually less than 5-ish), however, so I may just store them like "Folder\Name1.filetype1" and "Folder\Name1.filetype2" and so on, then repeating that for "Name2" or such, storing all of the files in the same folder. Not what I wanted, but if I can't do exactly what I want, then I'm okay with a compromise.

[Shatter]

As far as I can tell, the proper way to use wildcards in folder names is to specify them as the last part of the search mask.

Folder\* will work as a search to find all files. You will have to specify fa_directory if you want to include folders in your search as well.

Folder\*\File.ini therefore will not work.

You could rework your script to recursively search arbitrarily-named folders to test for the presence of File.ini or any other file.

Perhaps something called scrFind that looks more like the following:

// scrFind
var _folder = argument0 + "\";
var _fname = argument1;
var _result = 0;
var _queue = ds_queue_create();

// search folder for filename (may contain wildcards)
if ( file_find_first(_folder + _fname, 0) != "" ) _result = 1;
file_find_close();

var _file = file_find_first(_folder + "*", fa_directory);
while ( _file != "" ) {
  if ( directory_exists(_folder + _file) ) ds_queue_enqueue(_queue, _file);
  _file = file_find_next();
}
file_find_close();

while ( !ds_queue_empty(_queue) ) {
  _result += scrFind(_folder + ds_queue_dequeue(_queue), _fname);
}
ds_queue_destroy(_queue);

return _result;

call scrFind(working_directory + "Folder", "File.ini") to recursively search all files/folders under "working_directory\Folder" for File.ini and return a count of folders found.

or call scrFind(working_directory + "Folder", "*.ini") to search for all .ini files.

or more generally scrFind(working_directory + "Folder", "Name.filetype")

hope this helps.

[Zappy]

Originally posted by Shateaux Gateaux:

- You will have to specify fa_directory if you want to include folders in your search as well. -

That sounds nice. For the thing that I'm trying to do, that might work, though I can't test stuff related to that right now. (But I'll keep it in mind for the next time that I work on this project.)

Originally posted by Shateaux Gateaux:

- You could rework your script to recursively search arbitrarily-named folders to test for the presence of File.ini or any other file. -

To be fair, the only reason that I wanted to check for File.ini or such in the first place was so that I could find(/could've hopefully found) the folders. In this script, I simply care about the amount of folders, not their contents. Stuff relating to the contents will come in a more specialized manner on its own.

Originally posted by Shateaux Gateaux:

- Perhaps something called scrFind that looks more like the following:

- _result += scrFind(_folder + ds_queue_dequeue(_queue), _fname); -

I don't think that that would work. I remember GameMaker: Studio telling me off once for trying to call a script from within that same script, so having a script called scrFind use scrFind wouldn't even compile the executable if I remember correctly.

Originally posted by Shateaux Gateaux:

- hope this helps.

Despite the above two responses of mine, yes, that should help a lot. Thank you.