Hi,

I remember some discussion here a couple of years ago about the
FileSystemObject. Some of the more experienced VB6 programmers had a very
negative opinion of it. I just found out that I may need to use it in a
project at work; I am trying to remember what the downsides mentioned were
so I can avoid any potential pitfall.  Does the FSO suffer from poor
performance? Is it an issue with deploying applications relying on it?

Thanks for your advice.

Yes; it's notoriously slow

Yes; there are several versions floating around they aren't all compatible
with each other.

Those are the two main strikes against it.  There are also places where it
is disabled to help avoid virus propagation.  The bottom line for me is that
it is an extra dependency to deal with when it's pretty easy to eliminate it
with some VB code and API work and lots of examples are available.  It
doesn't provide anything that can't be done better and/or faster in other
ways.

Bob Butler wrote:
[VBnet File API]  Performance Comparison - FSO vs API
http://vbnet.mvps.org/code/fileapi/fsoapicompare.htm

And all that, too!

If you like the FileSystemObject's object model, then you might try
this library:"

http://www.killervb.com/FileSystemLib.aspx

Phew - First time I've seen that - it looks very interesting

thanks Chris

FSO is the spawn of Satan.  Every time you use it, a butterfly dies.

Negative enough? <g>


Show quoteHide quote

¤ Hi,
¤
¤ I remember some discussion here a couple of years ago about the
¤ FileSystemObject. Some of the more experienced VB6 programmers had a very
¤ negative opinion of it. I just found out that I may need to use it in a
¤ project at work; I am trying to remember what the downsides mentioned were
¤ so I can avoid any potential pitfall.  Does the FSO suffer from poor
¤ performance? Is it an issue with deploying applications relying on it?

In general it's not on par with respect to performance but in some situations it's acceptable if the
file operations are not repetitive. I use it but typically only in ASP applications where there is
no native language file i/o and I don't have time to develop an ActiveX DLL to perform this
function.

I've seen some versioning issues although I've never encountered any myself. You're more likely to
encounter issues if you're distributing your app to home or external users, where system
configurations can vary widely. If the environment you are distributing to is under a fair amount of
control then versioning will probably not be an issue.


Paul
~~~~
Microsoft MVP (Visual Basic)

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