Run reports 'access denied'

[johnsoneclypse]

I have used AutoIt successfully for several years, and was quite surprised yesterday when a script I had used for 2.5 years failed to run a program. I have been unable to determine the cause of the problem. I did update from AutoIt 3.1 to 3.2 in the hope of finding better tools to track the problem down, and I was really impressed with the SciTE development environment. I created a simpler version of the script which duplicates the problem, which is here:

;------------------------

$file = "notepad2.exe"

$dir = "C:\Documents and Settings\Ken Johnson\Desktop\"

$longname = FileGetLongName ( $dir & $file )

$attrib = FileGetAttrib ( $dir & $file )

$size = FileGetSize ( $dir & $file )

$modified = FileGetTime ( $dir & $file, 0, 1)

$created = FileGetTime ( $dir & $file, 1, 1)

$accessed = FileGetTime ( $dir & $file, 2, 1)

$Comments = FileGetVersion ( $dir & $file, "Comments" )

ConsoleWriteError ( "LongName : " & $longname & @LF )

ConsoleWriteError ( "Attributes : " & $attrib & @LF )

ConsoleWriteError ( "Size : " & $size & @LF )

ConsoleWriteError ( "Modified : " & $modified & @LF )

ConsoleWriteError ( "accessed : " & $accessed & @LF )

ConsoleWriteError ( "created : " & $created & @LF )

ConsoleWriteError ( "Comments : " & $Comments & @LF )

Run ( $dir & $file, $dir )

;------------------------

The notepad2.exe program is Florian Balmer's Scintilla-based editor.

Here's the output in the SciTE debug window:

>"C:\Program Files\AutoIt3\SciTE\AutoIt3Wrapper\AutoIt3Wrapper.exe" /run /prod /ErrorStdOut /in "C:\Documents and Settings\Ken Johnson\Desktop\minimumFail.au3" /autoit3dir "C:\Program Files\AutoIt3" /UserParams

+>12:59:37 Starting AutoIt3Wrapper v.1.10.1.6 Environment(Language:0409 Keyboard:00000409 OS:WIN_XP/Service Pack 2 CPU:X86)

>Running AU3Check (1.54.10.0) from:C:\Program Files\AutoIt3

+>12:59:38 AU3Check ended.rc:0

>Running:(3.2.10.0):C:\Program Files\AutoIt3\autoit3.exe "C:\Documents and Settings\Ken Johnson\Desktop\minimumFail.au3"

LongName : C:\Documents and Settings\Ken Johnson\Desktop\Notepad2.exe

Attributes : A

Size : 552960

Modified : 20040625000000

accessed : 20080313125921

created : 20080313123000

Comments : Notepad2 is FREEWARE!

C:\Documents and Settings\Ken Johnson\Desktop\minimumFail.au3 (23) : ==> Unable to execute the external program.:

Run( $dir & $file, $dir )

Access is denied.

->12:59:38 AutoIT3.exe ended.rc:1

>Exit code: 1 Time: 1.585

The output from the results of the FileGet... calls convince me that the $dir and $file variables are set the way I expect. It also tells me that the file I'm trying to run really exists. The script also fails with the same error if I just double-click on the script icon. The system is running Windows XP, with SP2 and patches at least through Jan 2008, the account is a member of Administrators. A double-click on the desktop icon for Notepad2.exe runs the program. Notepad2 also runs if I set a command prompt window to the desktop directory and type notepad2.exe

I would be extremely pleased to receive suggestions on how to gather more information about what is going wrong. Thank you.

[johnsoneclypse]

A useful suggestion to learn more about this problem is to run the SysInternals/Microsoft filemon tool, with a filter string of "autoit".

A change that fixes the problem seen in this example program is to change the run function to look like this (34 decimal is the ascii double quote):

Run ( Chr ( 34 ) & $dir & $file & Chr ( 34 ), $dir )

This change also fixes the current version of the 'real' script. (which wasn't under source code control, unfortunately.) I'm still not clear on why the script stopped working, but I do have a solution.

[martin]

First version of this post deleted after I saw the second post.

The reason for the problem is the spaces in the path.

So this should also work

Run('"' & $dir & $file & '"','"' & $dir'"'); '"' is an inverted comma then a quotation mark then an inverted comma

Edited March 13, 2008 by martin