[newbie Q] how to get the path of the folder of a file?

This is an embarrassingly simple question that I cannot solve
nonetheless... :-(

Say I've got a path to a file:

HD:myFiles:theImportantFolder:theImportantFile


How do I then get the path of the folder that contains that file? That
is, how do I get:

HD:myFiles:theImportantFolder


I tried things like:

set myFolderPath to the folder of myFilePath

but that does not seem to work.


Any help is greatly appreciated.


Tom

In article
<jpdjajadiningrat-E83F98.00142305012004 DeleteThis @dreader2.news.tiscali.nl>, Tom
Djajadiningrat <jpdjajadiningrat DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote:

 > This is an embarrassingly simple question that I cannot solve
 > nonetheless... :-(
 >
 > Say I've got a path to a file:
 >
 > HD:myFiles:theImportantFolder:theImportantFile
 >
 >
 > How do I then get the path of the folder that contains that file? That
 > is, how do I get:
 >
 > HD:myFiles:theImportantFolder
 >
 > I tried things like:
 >
 > set myFolderPath to the folder of myFilePath
 >
 > but that does not seem to work.

One reason that doesn't work is because myFilePath is a string, not a
file. Strings don't have containing folders. They're strings, after
all.

The other reason is that the term Finder uses for the folder that
contains a given file is "container," not "folder." (Finder is
probably the best application to ask questions like this, since it's
always running and knows lots about files.) In Finder, "folder" is a
class representing (no surprise here) folders and is used for child
folders of a given container -- "folders of desktop folder" would refer
to all the folders on your desktop, for example.

So what you want is something like this:

tell application "Finder" to get container of file myFilePath

By saying "file myFilePath" you are saying "the file whose path is the
string myFilePath" -- this is an object that can have a container, and
"container of" retrieves it. This is a folder object, not a string.
If you want it as a path, use something like "get (container of file
myFilePath) as string."

Of course, this won't work if the file doesn't exist. Files that don't
exist aren't in a folder and thus don't have a container. In that case
you would have to restort to string manipulation, and simply cut off
everything past the last colon. I'll leave that as an exercise.

--
Jerry Kindall, Seattle, WA <http://www.jerrykindall.com/>

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