Hi, as stated in the MSDN article you cited, the REG_EXPAND_SZ type is a hint to the API/API-User, that the string (stored as any other string either 2-byte or 1-byte depending in the Version) might contain environment variables, that need to be expanded before use.
Respective M$ PowerShell, REG.exe versions etc. honor this hint and expand the variables before returning you the results... Am 06.02.2018 um 11:15 schrieb Bo Berglund via Lazarus: > > If I use Reg.ReadString method on a REG_EXPAND_SZ item which I have > found in the user settings in the registry for CVSNT I get back a > string looking like this: > C:\Programs\cvsnt\cvsnt-default.pem Does it look like this in Regedit.exe? I think yes in this case. The REG_EXPAND_SZ was "misused" here, because the next hex data below translates to the same text. The intended use of REG_EXPAND_SZ would be to store "%programfiles%\cvsnt\cvsnt-default.pem" instead - so that on internationalized (pre-win7/vista) systems it might expand to e.g. "c:\Programme\"... > But if I export the registry key with RegEdit I get this instead: > "CertificateFile"=hex(2):43,00,3a,00,5c,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,\ > > 6d,00,73,00,5c,00,63,00,76,00,73,00,6e,00,74,00,5c,00,63,00,76,00,73,00,6e,\ > > 00,74,00,2d,00,64,00,65,00,66,00,61,00,75,00,6c,00,74,00,2e,00,70,00,65,00,\ > 6d,00,00,00 See e.g. https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/6bbef2d0-425d-4fb7-8ced-29ff18b91698/regexpandsz-to-regsz-question?forum=vblanguage REG_EXPAND_SZ has to be encoded in Hex to be compatible with old Regedit versions / to be sure it is stored with the correct datatype. > Can someone explain how it works? And why there is no TRegistry class > method for fetching the REG_EXPAND_SZ data type? That I don't know - but according to https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/windows/desktop/ms724884(v=vs.85).aspx, you are required to do the conversion yourself, i.e. call ExpandEnvironmentStrings to get a usable path. But - you should try reading a "correct" REG_EXPAND_SZ value first, or look at the code of TRegistry, to see if there is any conversion going on at all. As for displaying - I would suggest displaying the "original" value (without expansion) alongside with a "current reading" e.g. containing the expanded string for the current system/user. Greetings, Alex -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list Lazarus@lists.lazarus-ide.org https://lists.lazarus-ide.org/listinfo/lazarus
