fs.readdir failing on and don't know why

Question

Running a node app to read a directory

fs.readdirSync('‎/Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward');

I consistently get

 Stack:
    error properties: Object({ errno: -2, syscall: 'scandir', code: 'ENOENT', path: '‎/Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward' })
    Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '‎/Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward'

But I know the directory is there

ls -al /Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward
    total 0
    drwxr-xr-x@ 9 edwardthompson  staff  288 Jan 18  2019 .
    drwxr-xr-x@ 6 edwardthompson  staff  192 Aug 29 12:30 ..
    drwxr-xr-x@ 9 edwardthompson  staff  288 Jan 18  2019 Births
    drwxr-xr-x@ 4 edwardthompson  staff  128 Jan 18  2019 Census
    drwxr-xr-x@ 3 edwardthompson  staff   96 Jan 18  2019 Deaths
    drwxr-xr-x@ 7 edwardthompson  staff  224 Jan 18  2019 Marriages
    drwxr-xr-x@ 4 edwardthompson  staff  128 Jan 18  2019 Military
    drwxr-xr-x@ 3 edwardthompson  staff   96 Jan 18  2019 Other
    drwxr-xr-x@ 8 edwardthompson  staff  256 Jan 18  2019 books

Not sure how to proceed

fs.lstat gives me the same ENOENT results. The Dropbox directory has extended attributes (can't find getfattr)

I tried /user/... and it did not make a difference

Answer 1

const path = require('path');

const dirName = path.join(__dirname, '‎/ (../)x? /records/thompson-hayward');

(../)x? replace this with ../ how many times you need

fs.readdirSync(dirName).forEach(folder => {
// code here
});

Answer 2

You could try using path.resolve():

fs.readdirSync(path.resolve(‘Users’, ‘edwardthompson’, ‘Dropbox’, ‘Apps’, ‘EvidentiaSoftware’, ‘records’, ‘thompson-hayward’));

Answer 3

"/Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward" is not the correct path – this path starts with / which is the root directory.

With Linux the ./ is a shortcut to the current directory.

Try Something like this "./Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward"

here is a link to a working example showing a similar error if you omit the . https://repl.it/@joshuaaguilar20/FrequentFunctionalFraction

      var fs = require('fs');

fs.writeFile('./newFile.txt', 'Hello World', function(error){
  if(error){
    throw error;
  } else {
    console.log('success');
  }
});

/* let wrong = fs.readdirSync("/newDir", function (err) {
  console.log(err)
}) */

/* 
Returns Error 
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir '/newDir'
    at Object.readdirSync (fs.js:790:3)
    at evalmachine.<anonymous>:11:12
    at Script.runInContext (vm.js:133:20)
    at Object.runInContext (vm.js:311:6)
    at evaluate (/run_dir/repl.js:133:14)
    at ReadStream.<anonymous> (/run_dir/repl.js:116:5)
    at ReadStream.emit (events.js:198:13)
    at addChunk (_stream_readable.js:288:12)
    at readableAddChunk (_stream_readable.js:269:11)
    at ReadStream.Readable.push (_stream_readable.js:224:10)

 */


//Correct 

let x = fs.readdirSync("./newDir", function (err) {
  //adding ./ allows unix to find the Dir 
  console.log(err)
})

console.log(x)

Answer 4

A simple way to debug would be to try reading a different dir located in /Users/{username}. If it works, you might want to look into symlink issues with readdir. It is likely that Dropbox creates a symlink that is not properly resolved.

You can use fs.realpath() or fs.realpathSync to obtain the realpath of the dir you're looking for, and then use readdir on the realpath instead.

Answer 5

You can do some diagnostic work on the path with the hidden character and perhaps learn something about what it is.

If this creates the problem path:

let p = '/Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward';

Then, you can do this to see what that first character is:

 console.log(p.charCodeAt(0));

Or, output all the char codes in the string:

console.log(p.split("").map(chr => chr.charCodeAt(0).toString()).join(","));

Here it is in a runnable snippet (which does not reproduce your problem on my computer, but might show something on yours):

let p = '/Users/edwardthompson/Dropbox/Apps/EvidentiaSoftware/records/thompson-hayward';
let charCodes = p.split("").map(chr => chr.charCodeAt(0));
let str = charCodes.map((code, index) => {
    return `<tr><td>${p.charAt(index)}</td><td>${code.toString()}</td><td> 0x${code.toString(16)}</td></tr>`
}).join("");
document.write(`<style>table.colright td:nth-child(2), table.colright th:nth-child(2), table.colright td:nth-child(3), table.colright th:nth-child(3) {
  text-align: right;
}</style>`);
document.write("<table class='colright'>")
document.write("<thead><tr><th>&nbsp;char<br>&nbsp;</th><th>&nbsp;decimal<br>value</th><th>hex<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;value</th></tr></thead>");    
document.write("<tbody>");
document.write(str);
document.write("</tbody></table>");

My only working theory (which is an unsubstantiated guess) is that somehow the /U that starts the string is being interpreted as the beginning of a manually specified unicode character on your system only. It's supposed to be \u as the unicode prefix, not /U, but it's certainly acting like somehow it is misinterpreting the /U.

---

FYI, you might also want to do this:

console.log(path.sep) 

just to make sure your path separator isn't somehow haywire for your platform.