Check if certain files exist

[Cognethos]

Hi all,

I am writing a reference guide and wondering if I can check whether some files exist from a page.
If it exists then I can forward the user to one page.
And if not they will see another page.
Grateful if someone points me to the right direction.

Thanks,
Karen

[Cognethos]

Hi all,

Further investigating to it, I tried the following:

<script language=JavaScript
type="text/javascript">var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");

if(fso.FileExists("C:\Program Files\Common Files\My Directory\My file.txt"))
{
document.write("File Exist");
}
else
{
document.write("File not exist.");
}</script>

I always get "File not exist" message but I don't know why.
Can anyone know where it is wrong?

Thanks,
Karen

[Guest · Accepted solution]

Hello Cognethos,

You need to use double backslashes in your file path reference. Your script is correct except this line:
if(fso.FileExists("C:\Program Files\Common Files\My Directory\My file.txt"))

It should read this:
if(fso.FileExists("C:\\Program Files\\Common Files\\My Directory\\My file.txt"))

The technical reason for this is that there are special characters that you can not directly use in a string. In this case, your path is the string. Backslash happens to be one of the special characters that you can not directly use in a string. To get around this, you need to do something called an escape sequence. In this case, the escape sequence for \ is \\.