for achar := 'A' to 'Z' do

[Jorg3000]

Hi!
And if you need information about the type of a drive, see ...

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. aType:=Windows.GetDriveType(PChar(aRootPath));

DRIVE_REMOVABLE=2; DRIVE_FIXED=3; DRIVE_REMOTE=4; DRIVE_CDROM=5; DRIVE_RAMDISK=6;

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/fileapi/nf-fileapi-getdrivetypea
Jörg

[MarkMLl]

4 Definitional conventions
[…]
The characters required to form Pascal programs shall be those implicitly required to form the tokens and separators defined in 6.1.

But that is distinct from your earlier

6.4.2.2 Required simple-types

This was the point in the discussion a few years ago of a mainframe port: FPC could quite happily have EBCDIC-based string types (i.e. section 6), but changing the compiler itself to use anything other than an ASCII representation for the program (i.e. section 4) would have been decidedly non-trivial.

So a cross-compiler would have been viable, at least for newer variants of the IBM mainframe architecture, but a native compiler much less so.

MarkMLl

[ASerge]

By the way, the goal is to get all the devices on a Windows system with something like this:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. {$MODE OBJFPC}
2. {$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
3. {$LONGSTRINGS ON}
4.  
5. uses SysUtils, Windows;
6.  
7. procedure PrintDrives;
8. var
9.   BufSize: DWORD;
10.   P, Buffer: PUnicodeChar;
11.   S: UnicodeString;
12. begin
13.   BufSize := GetLogicalDriveStringsW(0, nil);
14.   if BufSize = 0 then
15.     RaiseLastOSError;
16.   GetMem(Buffer, BufSize * SizeOf(UnicodeChar));
17.   try
18.     if GetLogicalDriveStringsW(BufSize, Buffer) = 0 then
19.       RaiseLastOSError;
20.     P := Buffer;
21.     while P[0] <> #0 do
22.     begin
23.       S := P;
24.       Inc(P, Length(S) + 1);
25.       Writeln(S);
26.     end;
27.   finally
28.     FreeMem(Buffer);
29.   end;
30. end;
31.  
32. begin
33.   PrintDrives;
34.   Readln;
35. end.

[Fred vS]

@Jorge3000 and @ASerge and @Bart: many thanks for that execellent options.

But I forgot to note that I prefer a cross-os code and not use window unit .
So I will stay with one of the options using a loop with if directoryexists((achar + ':\') in it.

Fre;D

[wildfire]

@Jorge3000 and @ASerge and @Bart: many thanks for that execellent options.

But I forgot to note that I prefer a cross-os code and not use window unit .
So I will stay with one of the options using a loop with if directoryexists((achar + ':\') in it.

Fre;D

Which in itself is not cross OS.

[MarkMLl]

Which in itself is not cross OS.

I have to agree, since I'm sure that Fred is interested in more than Windows and DOS. But allowing that the other OSes tend to be unix-based, it's difficult to decide on an appropriate alternative unless we try to do something like enumerating / plus any other filesystems that some system component can access without actually mounting it.

MarkMLl

[Fred vS]

@Jorge3000 and @ASerge and @Bart: many thanks for that execellent options.

But I forgot to note that I prefer a cross-os code and not use window unit .
So I will stay with one of the options using a loop with if directoryexists((achar + ':\') in it.

Fre;D

Which in itself is not cross OS.

It depend what you call cross OS, the previous code of course will have no result on Unix.
Here part of the code to populate a grid, like a filedialog.  (of course using {$ifdef windows} for the afphabet drivers and {$ifdef unix} for "/" in path will make code lighter but will not generate crash without it.)

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. // this will be for Windows only
2. {$ifdef windows}  // optional
3.   for achar := 'A' to 'Z' do
4.     begin
5.      if directoryexists(achar + ':\') then
6.        begin
7.         Inc(x);
8.         fo.places.rowcount := x+1;
9.          fo.places[1][x] := string(achar + ':\');
10.        end;
11.    end;
12.    
13.     if directoryexists('C:\users') then  // only Windows
14.     begin
15.       Inc(x);
16.       fo.places.rowcount := x+1;
17.       fo.places[1][x] := string('C:\users');
18.     end;
19. {$endif}  
20.  
21. {$ifdef unix} // optional
22.     if directoryexists('/') then // only Unix
23.     begin
24.       Inc(x);
25.       fo.places.rowcount := x+1;
26.       fo.places[1][x] := string('/');
27.     end;
28.     if directoryexists('/usr') then // only unix
29.     begin
30.       Inc(x);
31.       fo.places.rowcount := x+1;
32.       fo.places[1][x] := string('/usr');
33.     end;
34.     {$endif}
35.  
36.     if directoryexists(tosysfilepath(sys_getuserhomedir)) then // Windows and Unix
37.     begin
38.       Inc(x);
39.       fo.places.rowcount := x+1;
40.       fo.places[1][x] := string(tosysfilepath(sys_getuserhomedir));
41.     end;
42.     if directoryexists(tosysfilepath(sys_getuserhomedir + directoryseparator + 'Desktop')) then // Windows and Unix
43.     begin
44.       Inc(x);
45.       fo.places.rowcount := x+1;
46.       fo.places[1][x] := string(tosysfilepath(sys_getuserhomedir + directoryseparator + 'Desktop'));
47.     end;
48. ....
49.  

[PascalDragon]

@Jorge3000 and @ASerge and @Bart: many thanks for that execellent options.

But I forgot to note that I prefer a cross-os code and not use window unit .
So I will stay with one of the options using a loop with if directoryexists((achar + ':\') in it.

Fre;D

Which in itself is not cross OS.

If you need to work with drive letters you already are not cross platform. And sometimes you need to provide a platform specific view (e.g. displaying the full root on *nix systems, but displaying the drive letters on Windows for the user to find themselves at home).