fscommand exec not working, CS3

[drmartin1998]

Hi all,
I'm running into a problem with the following command not working in a Flash CS3 projector:

fscommand("exec", "Creator_Desktop_702_Lite_Inst");

I have Creator_Desktop_702_Lite_Inst in a fscommand subfolder at the same level as the projector. It's just not launching the file. If I take this same command into Flash 8 it seems to work just fine.

Any ideas as to why my projector from CS3 would not be working while my projector from 8 is?

[springframework]

it may be with the flash 9 player. This might be the problem.


check out this post, it talks about it:

http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=135418&highlight=fscommand





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[drmartin1998]

Yes it appears to be a problem with Flash Player 9, and possibly just on the Intel Macs.

Is there anyway to accomplish this by using External Interface? I'm locked into AS3 at the moment for the socket connection. If I'm unable to launch an external app from within a Flash projector I'm going to have to revert to Director MX 2004. :confused:

[daveVFX]

I am having the same problem in CS3.

when I try and run fscommand("exec", "myapplication"); Nothing happens there aren't evena ny errors. HAve you found any solutions or workarounds for the problem. DO you know if adobe if aware or and or fixing it.

Thanks
Dave

[treylok]

I am having the same problem with the flash 9 projector. It seems every new version of flash tries to limit, or cripple the use of fscommand("exec","file"). I just do not understand why adobe does this. Are there THAT many problems with viruses being spread by projectors calling external programs, I highly doubt it. I just want to run a simple applescript command from my projector to open up a PDF, but it will not work using a CS3 projector even though it works fine in a flash 8 projector. Worst of all, there is no documentation which states that they have changed anything with fscommand. They may as well take out the exec command in future versions of flash, because at this point I can't figure out how anyone could use it to do ANYTHING useful. Why oh why are you doing this adobe? :mad:

[dr_zeus]

Yes it appears to be a problem with Flash Player 9, and possibly just on the Intel Macs.

I can confirm that I was able to get "exec" to work using a Windows projector created with Flash CS3.

I copied c:\windows\system32\calc.exe (Windows calculator) to an "fscommand" directory below where my FLA is located. On the first frame of the FLA, I added the following code:

fscommand("exec", "calc.exe");

I exported it to a Windows projector, and ran the EXE. Calculator started right away.

[daveVFX]

Hi,

I have been going back and forth with Adobe and as far as I could tell it doesn't work on any combination of computer or OS. I'd appreciate it if you could post details of your system and exactly what you did to get it to work. Also is this an AS3 File or and AS2 File running in Flash Player 9?

Thanks
Dave

Heres the link at Adobe Forums:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=15&catid=194&threadid=1264958

[senocular]

We're currently looking into it. Fscommand exec on Windows should work with an .exe but isn't working with .bat files. On Mac its not working much at all. I'll post here when I find out more.

[nox noctis]

I've captured the error message (Windows XP pro SP2):
http://noregret.org/heap/flash-mx.ru/fp9_fscommand.gif

The bug seems to be present in 9-th projector only.

[dr_zeus]

but isn't working with .bat files

Yes, I got an EXE working on Windows, but the batch file I tried failed.

[barqy]

NOTE: I did some further reading on MSDN after posting, and it's possible that the
"\\?\" prefix I mention below just means that the path is in UNICODE, and not indicitive of a problem. More reading and testing to do.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

I had problems with the fscommand('exec') today, and was able to trace down a behaviour difference between Flash 8 and CS3.

If you fscommand('exec') a program in Flash 8, the program's working directory might be: d:\fscommand (assume running from the root of a cdrom)

If you fscommand('exec') from Flash CS3, the program's working directory is corrupted: \\?\d:\fscommand

This means the EXE programs located in fscommand will execute fine.

However, if the EXE program happens to want to, for example, call an installer located in a subdirectory, no workie. The app I was working on today provides friendly access to product manuals and some custom applications.

It's been too long for me to remember clearly, but the corrupted working directory is likely the problem for running BAT files. Here's my guess as to why (remember this is from hazy dos days):

BAT files are not directly executable, they need a command interpreter, aka CMD.EXE. Since folks are reporting a dos window opening, I am guessing that CMD.EXE is located. However the current directory is junk, so the original BAT file can't be re-located.

[northcode]

Details about why this is "broken" in CS3 can be found by following the lin below. You'll also find a FREE solution to getting EXEC to work with BAT files again. Sorry for the late reply on this!

http://www.northcode.com/blog.php/2007/08/14/FSCommand-EXEC-is-Broken-in-Flash-CS3

[mattdennis3]

Has anyone figured out how to get this to work in a Macintosh projector?

[northcode]

The new version of proxy is for Windows only. I woud guess they made similar changes on the Mac that had equally wonderful results.

[dave_hales]

Has anyone figured out how to get this to work in a Macintosh projector?

I think I may have stumbled upon a solution of this. Works for my problem so here goes:

In my flash CS3 file, in the publish settings dialogue box > formats tab, the filename for macintosh projector by default is filename.hqx resulting in a published file named filename.hqx.app and my resulting .app files called using fscommand didn't work.

Changing the filename in the publish setting dialogue box to just filename (ie. removing the '.hqx' bit) results in a file named filename.app, and now the .app files run!

Be useful to know if this really is the cause of all this trouble, if so it's pretty slack to leave an old suffix in as default!