Extracting PATH info from the Clipboard on a Mac

If Mac is like Windows, find the last slash = LS in the pathed filename, the path is before that slash ie Path$ = Mid$(pathedFile$, 1, LS-1)

There was a _Reverse instr something that Fellippe added before v 2.0 that worked perfect for finding first char/str$ from right but I forgot the Command name and can't find it in Wiki yet. I will try a couple more things... it's not referenced from INSTR??

That's it, just found it myself

addicted2boats we discussed 2 other methods of cross platform files access here:
qb64.boards.net/thread/48/files-function-mimics-qb45

QB64 has _CWD$ and ChDir you can make a little navigator/browser to obtain pathed filenames.
The Direntry.h method gets lists of both folders and files. I was using it for Get_Filename.exe, I will find code and post.

Thank you very much!!! I was hoping (but not hopeful) there was a more direct method to do this. Then I started thinking about what it would take to emulate a file browser in order to achieve what I needed. But you have already done all the work! I'm a little fuzzy tonight so I haven't executed it yet, but I'm sure it will get me there.

Since the files I am processing are in subfolders to my main media folder, I also considered selecting a file or folder, then using a shell command to have the Mac search for files or folders with that name, and getting the PATH from that. It wouldn't be a search of my entire hard drive, so not too intensive. But what you did was much more flexible.

Thank you again for all your help. I programmed my way around the missing _MOUSEWHEEL command using scroll boxes, but this PATH stuff was just an irritating thorn.

Sounds like you're running a Plex server. Good stuff. I have approximately 10TB myself. I don't process each file like you do, though.

OKAY!!!!! I finally found the appropriate method. As I often find on the Mac, there was a simple solution that wasn't well documented. I searched and searched and finally stumbled on it. It fits in with the "standard" way of doing things on a Mac, but seems to get overlooked by just about everyone. Anyway, I'm rambling.

In Finder (the Mac equivalent of File Explorer) if you select files or folders, then right-click on them, you can copy them to the clipboard. Simple and straight forward. But it doesn't copy the Path information. There are 3 simple ways to accomplish this.
A) Right-click on the files/folders. Instead of clicking on the "Copy" entry, hold down the [Option] key. "Copy" becomes "Copy as Pathnames". That's it! Dead simple. It copies the entire path and filename to the clipboard.
B) If you are keyboard centric, use [Command]+[Option]+[C].
C) If you are mouse-centric like me, you don't have to press the [Option] key if you add a "Copy Path" option to your right-click menu. It requires Automator, but is dead simple to do:
1) Start Automator from your Applications folder. If you see a big, relatively empty window (for selecting existing workflows) click on the [Done] button to close it.
2) On the pulldown menu select File>New.
3) You should be at the main Automator window, with a pop-up asking you to "Choose a type for your document".
4) Double-click on "Service".
5) At the top select "Service receives selected files or folders" and "in Finder.app".
6) In the far left pane select "Utilities".
7) In the middle pane double-click on "Copy to Clipboard", you'll see it show up in the right pane.
8) Select File>Save from the pulldown menu and choose a name (Copy Path).

That's it! Now when you right click on files/folders you will see Copy Path in the dialog box. By the way, if it gets pushed into a submenu called "Services", it is because Mac only allows 4 services in the menu before it creates the submenu. You can fix this by deleting unused services, or by running a command to increase the number of allowed services. I ran "defaults write -g NSServicesMinimumItemCountForContextSubmenu -int 999" in Terminal (without the quotes).

Also, you will have to relaunch Finder before these services will show up in the context menu. Use the Terminal command "killall Finder" if you wish.

So I can't drag and drop on a Mac, but I can start my Basic program, then use Finder to select and copy the folder(s)/filename(s) with complete Path to the clipboard, which works really well. I hope other Mac users will find this as useful as me.

The last instance you mentioned where you only get the first item in a list of items copied; it sounds like it has something to do with null characters. Try pasting your list of filenames into something like Notepad++ with the symbols turned on and see what characters are terminating each line.