Menu ItemNames disregard first underscore character

[Teds]

Are there any characters that are not valid in a LabVIEW custom ItemName?

If you create an ItemName such as 'One_Two_Three' under a File Item, or even at the top-level it is displayed wrong.

Item Name:  One_Two_Three

Displayed as: OneTwo_Three

It seems the first 'underscore' is being cutoff.  When displayed it actually looks like the T (in Two) is underlined.

Is that expected behavior?

I was working on some code to display a Recently Used File List in the File menu.  I was hoping to just read the filename (as ItemNames) but items with an initial underscore are causing this error.  I suppose there are some workarounds where I could just replace all "_" with some other character but that seems like more work than is necessary.

Thanks,

PH

[Teds]

I should mention:  Using LabVIEW 2010 SP1.

[RavensFan · Accepted solution]

Yes, it is expected behavior.

Using the underscore character ahead of a menu item defines that letter to be a shortcut for when you use the keyboard.  So it defines the T as the shortcut to pick that menu line.  Look at the regular LabVIEW menu and you'll see numerous menu items with underlined characters.

Is there a reason why you want to use an underscore character in your menu?  That is unusual and probably not recommended by some Microsoft UI guideline somewhere.

You could use a double underscore character for that first one.  Then it will appear as a single underscore character.  But then that will define the underscore as the shortcut key.  Or you could define a the letter O, n, or e as a shortcut, then that will free up that _T to become shown with an underscore and not defined as a shortcut of T.

[Teds]

I wanted to put in the full path for recently used files in the File Menu.  It works fine except for paths with underscores in them.

Notice, though, what I said the 'underscore' is NOT at the beginning but it replaces the first underscore it sees, no matter where the position is located.

"One_Two_Three" is what I want to display in the menu.

What actually displayed is:

OneTwo_Three

So if any of my paths contain a "_" ANYWHERE in them it gets removed by LabVIEW as the ItemName.

Thanks,

PH

[RavensFan]

I never said it was at the beginning of the menu item.  It is ahead of a character that you want to make a shortcut letter.  Often it is at the beginning such as before the F in File or S in Save., but it can be used anywhere in the menu item.

[Teds]

Thank you for the response,

I am still in the process of adding a 'Recent Files' submenu from the File menu.  I wanted to display the FULL path to any files that the user recently opened. For example:

File -> Recent Files

Would display the full path, whatever that might be ( including any "_" characters ), such as these belo

C:\Program Files\Project1\Test2_2.INI

C:\Program Files\Project1\Test3_1.INI

I noticed that LabVIEW somehow gets around this,  if open a VI with a "_" character the correct filename is displayed in the 'File->Recent Files' submenu.

How do they manage to do that?  Is there some escape character for underscores?

My current workaround is to replace all "_" with "~" when displaying the item in the menu and then reversing the process when the user selects the file to display.

Thanks,

PH

[Teds]

I found that if you add "__"  ( two underscores) for the first underscore it will resolve to display just one "_" in the ItemName displayed in the menu.    So my logic will have to read an INI file, where I keep the list of recent files opened, replace the first "_" with "__" and set this as the actual ItemName in my Recent Files menu.

When a user selects a Recent Files menu item, I will have go back the opposite way to change "__" back to "_" in the ItemName selected.

Thanks,

PH