Application builder - Invalid characters in filename

[MOJO_FZJ]

Dear LabVIEW Community!

Please help me, I recently updated to LabVIEW 2024 Q1 and a new PC. After this update the App builder crashes with an error message that a filename in a LLB contains an invalid character:

"The filename (...\*IDN?.vi) entered is either blank or has invalid characters -- \ / : * ? < > | " 

Possible reason(s):

LabVIEW: (Hex 0x41C) The LabVIEW filename is invalid.

The LLB is provided by the device manufacturer and I use it for years without any problems. I wonder, if I'm the only one with this (new?) problem.

Was it just accepted in the past? Do I need to rename all files manually? There are several VIs with invalid characters in several LLBs.

Cheers

MoJo

[Bob_Schor]

The App Builder crashes when you ask it to build something.  The Error Message is clear, and makes great sense -- your Build seems to specify a file whose name has the characters *IDN?.vi , which are clearly not "legal" filenames, and must reside somewhere in your code.  If you can't find these characters by yourself, post (all of) your code and we'll help you look for this misplaced string (looks like a VISA command/response).

Did the code work in an earlier version of LabVIEW?  Have you tried going back to the "earlier version that worked" and seeing what has changed?

Bob Schor

[billko]

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@Bob_Schor wrote:

The App Builder crashes when you ask it to build something.  The Error Message is clear, and makes great sense -- your Build seems to specify a file whose name has the characters *IDN?.vi , which are clearly not "legal" filenames, and must reside somewhere in your code.  If you can't find these characters by yourself, post (all of) your code and we'll help you look for this misplaced string (looks like a VISA command/response).

Did the code work in an earlier version of LabVIEW?  Have you tried going back to the "earlier version that worked" and seeing what has changed?

Bob Schor

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Yeah, the OP posted that it used to work in an earlier version.  This sounds like a legacy driver.  LabVIEW must be handling files within an LLB differently these days.  (Although really I am surprised it ever worked.)

[tst · Accepted solution]

I was recently asked by a client to support an old program of theirs. For various reasons we decided to upgrade the code to LV 2024 Q1 and build an EXE to see that the code they gave me actually matches the version of the EXE they're using and that they can run it.

When doing this, I also saw the same issue. I assumed that the project I had was probably simply not the updated version and that in the version that built the EXE there was workaround for this, but now that you asked this question, I guess that this did work and simply stopped working correctly at some version of LV. I do know now that at least the code they gave me is not the most recent version, so it's possible this was handled differently, but is seems more likely that it worked and stopped working.

Anyway, what I did was to add all of the VIs with the invalid names to a virtual folder in the project and then rename them in the  build spec so that they don't include the invalid characters (this is in the "Source File Settings" page). If you do this too, note that the names need to not conflict with other existing VIs.

[MOJO_FZJ]

Hi Bob,

Thank you for your reply. Yes, it worked well in LabVIEW 2016.

I also wondered about the invalid characters in the filename, but because the compilation worked, I didn't think about it any further.

But with LV2024 it no longer works.

The LLB is from 2010 and was shipped on a CD : )

Cheers

MOJO

[MOJO_FZJ]

Hi tst!

Many thanks for your suggestions.

Does it mean, that I need to rename each file by hand?

Why do you suggest to do it within the build spec and not in the LLB itself?

MOJO

[tst]

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@MOJO_FZJ wrote:

Does it mean, that I need to rename each file by hand?

Why do you suggest to do it within the build spec and not in the LLB itself?

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I suppose you could write a VI to iterate over all of them and call the Save Instrument method for each VI, but you would still need to decide what to call each of them. In my case, for instance, simply removing the illegal characters would not have worked, because there were already VIs with those names (for instance, something like ABC.vi for writing and ABC?.vi for reading). I only had about ten such VIs, so I just did it manually.

You could change the VI names in the LLB as well, which would make your life easier if you have future builds. I didn't do that because I didn't want to touch the LLB and have to deal with potential consequences (for instance, if we happen to get a newer version of the LLB from the vendor which supplied it, presumably it would still have the original VI names and then we would need to do some relinking).

You could probably also set the LLB as a build destination outside of the EXE and save the VIs there, which will then probably not require renaming, but will requiring having the LLB as another file next to the EXE.