WorkbenchControlA() - Issue getting selected icons information with just .info files

[Daedalus]

I'm using WorkbenchControlA() to gather information on the selected icons in Workbench using the WBCTRLA_GetSelectedIconList tag. It works perfectly for standard files whether they have a .info file associated with them or not, but it seems to completely fail if any of the icons selected don't have an associated file. When this is the case, WorkbenchControlA() returns false, and so even if some of the selected icons have associated files, they can't be listed until the file-less icon is found and deselected. The Autodocs say that Dos/IOErr() can be used to query the failure but IOErr() doesn't give any error code (returns 0).

This happens in both 3.9 and 3.2... Is it intended behaviour? Or is it an oversight? Or am I missing something? Sometimes .info files are used without associated files as launching icons for example, and it means my code can't be used whenever such a file is involved.

Interestingly, using ARexx to list the selected icons has no problem gathering the file-less icons, but it's much slower than using workbench.library directly.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I'm using WorkbenchControlA() to gather information on the selected icons in Workbench using the WBCTRLA_GetSelectedIconList tag. It works perfectly for standard files whether they have a .info file associated with them or not, but it seems to completely fail if any of the icons selected don't have an associated file. When this is the case, WorkbenchControlA() returns false, and so even if some of the selected icons have associated files, they can't be listed until the file-less icon is found and deselected. The Autodocs say that Dos/IOErr() can be used to query the failure but IOErr() doesn't give any error code (returns 0).

This happens in both 3.9 and 3.2... Is it intended behaviour?

Um, sorry for the late answer: this is a mix between a feature and a bug.

The 'C' API produces only those entries for which there is a file, drawer or link present which also happens to be associated with an icon. You might say that having an associated icon is the primary criterion for each list member.

[Daedalus]

Thanks for the reply. Fair enough, it seems to severely limit the usefulness of the function in that case, especially since having an icon without an associated file appears to be treated as an error condition, so even the "valid" selected files aren't listed. I've worked around it by using ARexx whenever the call fails, but that's of course much slower when you have a large number of files involved.