After getting my resource manager to work, I thought I would change the "search for resource in x folder" code so that it wouldn't look at files it didn't need to ( system files, folders, hidden files, etc. ). Each file can have an attribute of one or more of the following: FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE FILE_ATTRIBUTE_COMPRESSED FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY FILE_ATTRIBUTE_SYSTEM FILE_ATTRIBUTE_TEMPORARY So, naturally, I do a check on each file to see if it has the attribute FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL. My manager immediately stopped finding any of the textures I told it to look for. After much hair pulling and cursing (yay for comparing integers to #defines) I discovered that all my resource files had an attribute of FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE. These are all images I created in GIMP. I am at a loss as to why they are considered archives. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the folder they are in was originally extracted from a zip file ( although, as I stated, the images themselves were created with GIMP ). MSDN's description of FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE is: "The file is an archive file. Applications use this attribute to mark files for backup or removal.", which is, in my opinion, wonderfully vague. I know I've made a check for FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL in previous code and it worked fine. So my code is working, and I'm not complaining, but I was just curious as to why my files might have this attribute. If any of you could shed some light on this, I would be grateful [smile].

FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE doesn't mean the file's a archive. It is (was?) used for backups and it's purpose is to mark a file as "archived" or not (so you know which files has changed since the last backup). If they were extracted from a zip it's possible they are marked as archived. I don't know if this "arhived flag" is used anymore.

Quote:Original post by __filip
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE doesn't mean the file's a archive. It is (was?) used for backups and it's purpose is to mark a file as "archived" or not (so you know which files has changed since the last backup). If they were extracted from a zip it's possible they are marked as archived.

Yeah, I know the file isn't actually an archive - that's the weird part.

I also realized that a file I am writing using my resource manager is marked with FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ARCHIVE.

Its just strange that I've done this before and never ran into this problem.

Quote:I don't know if this "arhived flag" is used anymore.

That is possible, especially considering the amount of backward-compatibility code in the windows API.

Thanks for the reply.

Quote:Original post by Endurion
The archive attribute is not particularely useful nowadays. Basically in old days once a file was backupped its archive flag was removed. Once the file was modified it got the archive flag set marking it as need-to-backup.

I'd rather go the exclusive approach and ignore all files with the unwanted attributes like system file/folder or others.

Ah, that clears it up a bit. Thanks!

@Skeleton_V@T: That makes sense.

Now I know to be aware of this in the future. Thanks for all the replies.