Filesystem Activities

Version: 1.0.6  ·  ID: zoan-packages-fs  ·  Author: Zoan Software

The Files (filesystem) package works with files and folders: read and write text files, copy, move, delete, check whether something exists and list a folder’s contents. It is a support package found in almost every automation — to organize downloads, produce output files, move processed documents or read configuration data.

For structured data, use the dedicated package

This package handles text files and file/folder operations. To read or write structured formats, use the matching package: Excel (.xlsx), CSV, JSON, XML, PDF or Word.

File paths

Almost every activity takes a path. You can give it in two ways:

• Absolute path: C:\reports\output.txt or C:/reports/output.txt. In expressions, the backslash is taken literally: "C:\reports\output.txt" (to end a text with a backslash, write it twice: "C:\reports\\" + name). See Windows paths. Network paths (\\server\share\file.txt) also work if the account the robot runs under has access.
• Project file with asset(...): for files that travel inside your package (templates, sample data), use asset("data/input.txt"). It resolves the right path on whatever machine runs it. See asset().

Avoid relative paths (output.txt, data\output.txt): they are resolved against the robot’s working folder, which depends on where it starts. Since version 1.0.6, writing, appending, copying or moving with just a file name no longer fails, but a full path makes it clear where the file ends up.

Build paths safely

To join folders and file names, use pathJoin(folder, file) instead of concatenating \ by hand — it avoids slash mistakes. See file functions.

Destination folders

Write File, Append to File, Copy File and Move File create the destination folder (and any intermediate ones) if it does not exist: you don’t need a Create Directory first.

Overwriting (overwrite)

Watch the defaults, which are not the same in every activity:

Activity	Default overwrite
Write File	true — replaces the existing file
Copy File / Move File	false — fails if the destination exists

Encoding (encoding)

Read File, Write File and Append to File accept an encoding by name. Default "utf-8".

Value	When to use it
utf-8	Default. When writing, the file starts with the UTF-8 BOM, which Excel and Notepad recognize.
iso-8859-1 (or latin1)	Files from legacy Windows systems whose accented characters look wrong as UTF-8.
utf-16 (or unicode), utf-16BE, utf-32	Unicode files with 2 or 4 bytes per character.
us-ascii	ASCII characters only; anything else becomes ?.

When reading, if the file starts with a BOM (UTF-8, UTF-16 or UTF-32), the BOM wins over the given encoding. Other code-page names (such as windows-1252) may not be available and make the activity fail with 'windows-1252' is not a supported encoding name…: use iso-8859-1 instead.

System errors

Besides each activity’s own messages, a file operation can fail with an operating-system error (these messages may appear in English or in the Windows language). The most common:

Message	Cause and fix
The process cannot access the file '…' because it is being used by another process.	Another program has the file open (typically an open Excel workbook). Close it first, or retry with Retry and a delay.
Access to the path '…' is denied.	The robot’s account has no permission on the file or folder, or the file is read-only.
Could not find a part of the path '…'.	A folder in the path does not exist (for example, a disconnected network drive).

Activities

Read and write text

Activity	Type	Output	What it does
Read File	read-file	string	Reads the content of a text file
Write File	write-file	string	Writes text to a file (creates or replaces it)
Append to File	append-file	string	Appends text to the end of a file

File operations

Activity	Type	Output	What it does
File Exists	file-exists	bool	Does the file exist?
Copy File	copy-file	string	Copies a file to another path
Move File	move-file	string	Moves or renames a file
Delete File	delete-file	—	Deletes a file

Folders

Activity	Type	Output	What it does
Create Directory	create-directory	string	Creates a folder (and any missing ones in the path)
List Files	list-files	List	Lists the files/folders in a directory

A typical flow

Process each downloaded file and archive it:

List Files   path = "C:/downloads"   pattern = "*.xlsx"   → output: files

For Each   items = files   itemVariable = path
 └─ activities:
      ... process the file ...
      Move File   source = path   destination = pathJoin("C:/processed", fileName(path))

Next steps

• Read File / Write File — the most used.
• List Files — walk through a folder.
• Expressions › Files and paths — pathJoin, fileName, asset…