Firebird database alias connection string not working

[costin77]

On a Windows 10 pro 64 -bit PC I am trying to connect to a Firebird 2.1.3 database from foxpro.

I am able to connect it using the next code:

lcsql = "DRIVER=Firebird/InterBase(r) driver;UID=SYSDBA;PWD=masterkey;DBNAME= d:\#acces\newsal.fdb;Port=3050"
ln = Sqlstringconnect(lcsql,.T.)

However, when I am trying to use an alias defined in aliases.conf (newsal = d:#acces\newsal.fdb) I am getting "File database is not found":

lcsql = "DRIVER=Firebird/InterBase(r) driver;UID=SYSDBA;PWD=masterkey;DBNAME=newsal;Port=3050"
ln = Sqlstringconnect(lcsql,.T.)

Can you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

[mrotteveel]

In the first place, newsal = d:#acces\newsal.fdb is wrong (it is a relative path, and resolution will depend on the current path in the session for D:), it should be newsal = d:\#acces\newsal.fdb.

However, the # is used as a comment symbol in the file, so the alias you defined is actually just d:. If you had quoted the full error, you had probably seen "I/O error for file "D:"" (more recent versions will report an error with the alias instead). As far as I'm aware, it is not possible to escape it.

[mrotteveel]

As an aside, you're using an outdated and unsupported version of Firebird (Firebird 2.1 has been out of support since 2014!), and even worse, you're not even using the latest point release, which is 2.1.7.

[mrotteveel]

As far as I'm aware, it is not possible to escape it.

In Firebird 2.5 and higher, you can quote the value (e.g. newsal = "d:\#acces\newsal.fdb"); this doesn't work in Firebird 2.1.

[mrotteveel]

In short, if you want to define an alias, the path should not contain a #.

In Firebird 2.5 and higher, you can enclose the value in double quotes (newsal = "d:\#acces\newsal.fdb"), which will make the parser not consider the # the start of a comment and ignore the rest of the line. That is not available in Firebird 2.1.

[costin77]

Thank you