Get Special Folders (ie Desktop location)

[Tim Golden]

[colin.steadman at gmail.com]
| I'm just starting out writing Python scripts (in PSP), and need to
| find the location of Windows special folders such as 'My Documents'
| and 'Desktop' so that I can save files in the right place.  Is there
| any method I can use in Python to get these?
| 
| If I were doing this in VBScript it'd be:
| 
|   Dim    WSHShell
|   Set    WSHShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
|   msgbox WSHShell.SpecialFolders("Desktop")
| 

You can do that in Python using the pywin32 extensions
either by using the Wshell objects as you have done:

<code>

import win32com.client
WShell = win32com.client.Dispatch ("WScript.Shell")
WShell.SpecialFolders ("Desktop")

</code>

or by using the shell module from the same package.
I've got a module which wraps the common ones for
convenience:

http://tgolden.sc.sabren.com/python/winshell.html

but essentially what you're doing is this:

<code>
from win32com.shell import shell, shellcon

shell.SHGetPathFromIDList (
  shell.SHGetSpecialFolderLocation (
    0, shellcon.CSIDL_DESKTOP
  )
)
</code>

TJG

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