0

I'm trying to find out how to get the real path from .lnk files. I took this approach because the original files are in different locations and the routes have no pattern in its names. So I grouped a shortcuts of each file in a unique route. but still can't get the original routes automatically.

I need something like this:

files <- list.files(route, pattern = ".lnk", full.names = T)
real_path_files <- real_path(files) #using some function

I have R versión 4.4.0 so the packages "com" and "RDCOMClient" aren't availables. I say it because GPT suggested to me to use those packages. I believe (And I choose to believe) there is another way to solve this problem.

Any suggestions?

**** Aditional information ****

  read_raw <- function(x) {
    dput(readBin(x, raw(), n=file.info(x)$size))
  }

output:

lnk_bytes <- as.raw(c(0x4c, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x14, 0x02, 0x00, 0x00, 
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xc0, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x46, 
0x9b, 0x00, 0x08, 0x00, 0x20, 0x04, 0x00, 0x00, 0xa2, 0x88, 0x82, 
0x33, 0xff, 0xec, 0xda, 0x01, 0xa0, 0x5e, 0x08, 0x66, 0x00, 0xf4, 
0xda, 0x01, 0x70, 0xff, 0x86, 0x33, 0xff, 0xec, 0xda, 0x01, 0xdd, 
0x8d, 0x15, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
0x00, 0xfa, 0x03, 0x14, 0x00, 0x1f, 0x00, 0x89, 0x19, 0x27, 0x04, 
0xd2, 0xc4, 0x20, 0xa8, 0xed, 0x50, 0x62, 0xb6, 0x12, 0xf8, 0xa1, 
0xff, 0xa8, 0x00, 0x31, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x15, 0x59, 
0x56, 0x76, 0x30, 0x04, 0x43, 0x47, 0x43, 0x20, 0x2d, 0x20, 0x33, 
0x30, 0x30, 0x2e, 0x43, 0x4f, 0x4e, 0x54, 0x52, 0x41, 0x54, 0x4f, 
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0x72, 0x61, 0x74, 0x6f, 0x73, 0x00, 0x00, 0x76, 0x00, 0x09, 0x00, 
0x04, 0x00, 0xef, 0xbe, 0xc4, 0x58, 0x3b, 0xa0, 0x15, 0x59, 0xf0, 
0x94, 0x2e, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xc6, 0x52, 0x04, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
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0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xfe, 0x3e, 0x06, 0x00, 0x43, 0x00, 
0x47, 0x00, 0x43, 0x00, 0x20, 0x00, 0x2d, 0x00, 0x20, 0x00, 0x33, 
0x00, 0x30, 0x00, 0x30, 0x00, 0x2e, 0x00, 0x43, 0x00, 0x4f, 0x00, 
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0x94, 0x2e, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x3e, 0x48, 0x06, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 
0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x1a, 0x60, 0x00, 0x90, 0x00, 
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2
  • 1
    Can you share a sample lnk file with something like read_raw <- function(x) dput(readBin(x, raw(), n=file.info(x)$size))? If you put the output of read_raw("myfile.lnk") in the question it might be possible to decode without any additional packages. I just don't have any test files since I'm on a mac.
    – MrFlick
    Commented Aug 21 at 20:47
  • I'm not sure if I understood correctly, but I'm going to put the output of the function you provided with one of my lnk files.
    – Gonzalo S
    Commented Aug 22 at 16:34

1 Answer 1

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2

lnk files

1) Use filePath in the R.utils package:

library(R.utils)

# create a test shortcut/lnk file in current directory to Notepad
createWindowsShortcut("toNotepad.lnk", "C:/Windows/notepad.exe")

# find its real path
filePath("toNotepad.lnk", expandLinks = "local")
## [1] "C:/Windows/notepad.exe"

Note that at least in this example there is no need to get the real file path as this works fine to run Notepad:

shell("toNotepad.lnk")

2) Another approach is to extract the strings from the lnk file and then look for the one specifying the path. Be sure that Rtools is installed and that strings has been set to the path to the strings.exe file.

strings <- "C:/rtools44/x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix/bin/strings.exe"

"toNotepad.lnk" |>
  paste(strings, ... = _) |>
  shell(intern = TRUE) |>
  grep("^C:", x = _, value = TRUE)

## [1] "C:\\Windows\\notepad.exe"

Windows symbolic links

3) That said, you probably don't want to use .lnk files but want to use Windows symbolic link files which unlike .lnk files are part of the Windows file system. With symbolic links read.csv, etc. will read the link directly and get the underlying file without having to know the real path. file.symlink is part of base R.

Ensure that R is running with Admin rights to create symbolic links.

cat("a,b\n1,2\n", file = "my.csv") # create test file

file.symlink("my.csv", "mycsv")  # create symbolic link mycsv
## [1] TRUE

read.csv("mycsv")
##   a b
## 1 1 2

To remove the symbolic link file.remove("mycsv") will remove the symbolic link without removing the underlying file.

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6
  • thanks but this approach doesn't work. And I don't know why. In the next comment left the commands and the error I got
    – Gonzalo S
    Commented Aug 22 at 16:20
  • filePath(files[1], expandLinks = "local") Aviso: In readWindowsShortcut.default(lnkFile) : Detected a possibly unsupported file format: There are unknown 'flags' in the Windows Shortcut link file: hasShellItemIdList=TRUE, pointsToFileOrDirectory=TRUE, hasDescription=FALSE, hasRelativePath=TRUE, hasWorkingDirectory=TRUE, hasCommandLineArguments=FALSE, hasCustomIcon=FALSE, unicodedStrings=TRUE, unknown1=FALSE, unknown2=FALSE, unknown3=FALSE, unknown4=FALSE, unknown5=FALSE, unknown6=FALSE, unknown7=FALSE, unknown8=FALSE, unknown9=FALSE, unknown10=FALSE, unknown11=FALSE, unknown12=TRUE
    – Gonzalo S
    Commented Aug 22 at 16:24
  • Try creating the lnk files using createWindowsShortcut as in the answer.
    – G. Grothendieck
    Commented Aug 22 at 16:47
  • The files are in multiples routes, so I think is easier to copy manually the shortcuts in the unique folder for getting the real path after that. Try to do what you say, It would have the same problem as the original routes, I think.
    – Gonzalo S
    Commented Aug 22 at 19:52
  • Have provided an alternative. See (2).
    – G. Grothendieck
    Commented Aug 22 at 21:08

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