I have a text file with one line of text I would like to extract:

Option 1

I call up notepad.exe to open the file :
$$COMMAND = 'GUI ASYNC notepad c:\ftype.txt'
#A = SYSTEM($$COMMAND)

The above works to open the local text file with Notepad.

The following doesn't work as I don't have any idea what to put in for ???:

#A = DDE_REQUEST('NOTEPAD','c:\ftype.txt','???',$$VALUE)

Option 2

Is there a way to use ALIAS() to read from my local drive?

Thanks,
Chuck

The only advice I can give you is to use the new client.send or client.receive (not sure which one sends it to the server or to the client) commands to send the file from the local disk to you server.
Once the file is on the server you can use ALIAS() to read it in.

ALIAS can only be used to access server side files. We researched this issue and had to implement CLIENT.PUT. Wim is on the mark. There is no way to read from the local drive using PRO-IV commands. That being said, we found CLIENT.PUT in conjunction with CLIENT.EXECUTE worked just fine for us and kept us from having to move outside of PRO-IV.

CLIENT.GET and CLIENT.SEND move a file from the server to the client. CLIENT.PUT and CLIENT.RECEIVE move a file from the client to the server. Once a file is on the server, you can use ALIAS to read it or CLIENT.EXECUTE and execute a program against it.

These commands (except for ALIAS) are only available in 5.5.

Lew

Edited by Lewis Mccabe, 19 August 2005 - 12:48 PM.