Understanding View Open Include

[jussij]

This is an explanation on the View, Open Include File menu which is mapped to the FileOpenInLine keyboard function. This menu attempts to a load the file listed on the current line of any document or tool window.

Consider the following set of files arranged in the indicated directory structure:

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C:\example\file1.txt
C:\example\others\file2.txt
C:\example\others\file3.txt

Assume this is the contents of file1.txt and it is loaded into Zeus as the active document:

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file1.txt
file2.txt
file3.txt
others\file2.txt
others\file3.txt

Note that since c:\exmaple\file1.txt is the active file, this means the current active directory is c:\exmaple\.

If the open include menu is then used on each of these lines in turn these would be the results

1. file1.txt - works fine (happy to open ourselves)
2. file2.txt - fails (can't find this file c:\exmaple\ + \file2.txt)
3. file3.txt - fails (can't find this file c:\exmaple\ + \file3.txt)
4. others\file2.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\ + others\file2.txt)
5. others\file3.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\ + others\file3.txt)

Now use the Options Properties menu and in the Search Path entry add the following text:c:\example\others; and repeat the test. Now all the files are open correctly

So why has change made it work

Now when Zeus tries to load the files, it also uses the search path in the search, meaning you get these results:

1. file1.txt - works fine (happy to to open ourselves)
2. file2.txt - fails (can't find this file c:\exmaple\ + \file2.txt)
3. file2.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\others + \file2.txt)
4. file3.txt - fails (can't find this file c:\exmaple\ + \file3.txt)
5. file3.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\others + \file3.txt)
6. others\file2.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\ + others\file2.txt)
7. others\file3.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\ + others\file3.txt)

Now consider adding another file more\file4.txt as shown below:

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file1.txt
file2.txt
file3.txt
others\file2.txt
others\file3.txt
file4.txt
more\file4.txt

This gives this extra two extra results:

1. file4.txt - fails (can't find c:\exmaple + \file4.txt)
2. more\file4.txt - works (finds c:\exmaple\ + more\file4.txt)

By using the Options Properties menu and changing the search path to be c:\example\others;c:\example\more; and once again all the files load correctly

One other thing worth mentioning is the following case. Consider this text as being the contents of the file2.txt file:

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file3
file3.txt

This gives this extra results:

1. file3 - works (loads if cursor is on the word file3)
2. file3.bad - works (loads file3.txt if file3 is the selected text)
3. file3.txt - works (file4.txt)

How did Zeus load the first case

In this special case Zeus used the current word or selected text as the base of the file name and then appended the extension of the current file to create the full file name.

This is feature is particularly useful for languages like Java where the name of the class matches the name of the file in which it is defined.

Things to remember:

• The search path above is defined in the document type. This means it is only used when the active document is of the same document type.
• The exception to this rules is when the search path is added to the default document type. In this case it will be used by all documents.
• The search path can also be defined in the General section of the workspace settings.
• The file open include works for all windows.
• If this menus fails it can mean one of two things. Zeus could it could not find a file name in the current line or the file name that was found could not be located on the disk.
• If you highlight some text you can force Zeus to use the highlighted text as the file name.

Cheers Jussi