File Selector - Crash After Crash

[kleinfelter]

I've been using File Selector and dMC to convert my APEs to MP3s. I'm working through my artists alphabetically, doing a few letters at a time. I made my way up through H with few problems. Then I selected all artists beginning with I-M. Crashed.

OK, I had a lot of tracks in that range, so I rebooted and tried just I. Crashed. Hmmm. Maybe something funny with my I artists. Well there were some file names ending with tilde. Changed that. Converted the Is using dMC and not File Selector. Then started File Selector on just J-K. Crashed again.

It was working nicely, and now I can't get it to go. I definitely did *not* install anything or change any settings. The only thing I've been doing since starting the conversion was to read email and to browse groups.google.com and dilbert.com.

Perhaps it stores temp files somewhere besides the temp directory specified by TMP or TEMP environment variables? How can I clear the current situation?

TIA

[kleinfelter]

Shoulda mentioned -- File Selector completes selection. The crash happens when it tries to start dMC. The dMC dialog shows up but then the Windows crash report shows up before I can click on anything.

[Spoon]

What happens if you select the 'A's again? does it crash on the converter page?

[kleinfelter]

An excellent question! Files previously converted work.

A little further investigation has shown that the problem shows up whenever the files selected includes the following file:

London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble~Splendour of Baroque Brass~09~Five Dances (1)Galliard (2) The Choise (3)As it Fell on a Holy Eve (4)The Fruit of Love (5)The Faery Rounde~Classical.ape

I count that as 182 characters long. I'm guessing that's the problem.

*If* that is the problem, in an ideal world, there would be an error message about the offending file, rather than crashing.

Incidentally, once dMC crashes, clicking Convert To in File Selector no longer starts dMC. I've been exiting File Selector and deleting the BIN files in the program directory, and then File Selector will start dMC (albeit with the crash if I select the offending file).

Thanks for the support!

[kleinfelter]

I've got it.

The full path name of the file is 260 characters long, not including the terminating null. As you probably know, in Windows, the Unicode functions will let you work with file names that are up to 32,767 long, but the base Windows API only support length of 260, and the count must include the terminating null (giving a practical length of 259).

So... the file was created with a program that uses Unicode functions, and dMC probably doesn't.

I can't fault dMC for sticking to the base API (probably makes WINE support easier), but I would like to see an error message rather than a program fault.

(I think I'm going to write a little routine to scan my file system looking for path names that are too long.)

Thanks either way.

[Spoon]

Noted, good investigative work.