Contents

getFileSystemRepresentation(_:maxLength:)

Interprets the receiver as a system-independent path and fills a buffer with a C-string in a format and encoding suitable for use with file-system calls.

Declaration

func getFileSystemRepresentation(_ cname: UnsafeMutablePointer<CChar>, maxLength max: Int) -> Bool

Parameters

  • cname:

    Upon return, contains a C-string that represent the receiver as a system-independent path, plus the NULL termination byte. The size of buffer must be large enough to contain maxLength bytes.

  • max:

    The maximum number of bytes in the string to return in buffer (including a terminating NULL character, which this method adds).

Return Value

true if buffer is successfully filled with a file-system representation, otherwise false (for example, if maxLength would be exceeded or if the receiver can’t be represented in the file system’s encoding).

Discussion

This method operates by replacing the abstract path and extension separator characters (’/’ and ‘.’ respectively) with their equivalents for the operating system. If the system-specific path or extension separator appears in the abstract representation, the characters it is converted to depend on the system (unless they’re identical to the abstract separators).

Note that this method only works with file paths (not, for example, string representations of URLs).

The following example illustrates the use of the maxLength argument. The first method invocation returns failure as the file representation of the string (@"/mach_kernel") is 12 bytes long and the value passed as the maxLength argument (12) does not allow for the addition of a NULL termination byte.

char filenameBuffer[13];
BOOL success;
success = [@"/mach_kernel" getFileSystemRepresentation:filenameBuffer maxLength:12];
// success == NO
// Changing the length to include the NULL character does work
success = [@"/mach_kernel" getFileSystemRepresentation:filenameBuffer maxLength:13];
// success == YES

See Also

Working with Paths