Symbolic path

When files are located beneath certain special folders, callers that link to these files will link to them using a symbolic path, rather than an absolute or relative path. The symbolic path will be relative to the special folder. The following table lists these special folders and their symbolic path:

symbolic path	description	actual path
<userlib>	User Libraries	<LabVIEW>\user.lib
<vilib>	NI Libraries and Addons	<LabVIEW>\vi.lib
<instrlib>	Instrument Drivers	<LabVIEW>\instr.lib
<help>	Help Files	<LabVIEW>\help
<menu>	Palette Menus	<LabVIEW>\menus

Note that some of these can have the actual path changed by changing the settings in Tools>>Options. The whole point of the symbolic path is to indicate "load from whatever location this path is currently defined to be."

For example, if you have a VI located in the following location:

<LabVIEW>\user.lib\_OpenG.lib\array\array.llb\Conditional Auto-Indexing Tunnel__ogtk.vi

Callers will link to this VI using the following symbolic path:

<userlib>\_OpenG.lib\array\array.llb\Conditional Auto-Indexing Tunnel__ogtk.vi

symbolic path are not generally encountered. They are used mostly under the hood of LabVIEW, for example, when using the Application Linker:Read Info From File and Linker:Write Info To File methods.

When Using Modules (FPGA, RT, etc)

A symbolic path may resolve to different actual files on disk depending upon which target the VI is loaded into. So a VI that is written to use <vilib>\a.vi may use <labview>\vi.lib\a.vi when loaded for the desktop target, but may use <labview>\vi.lib\fpga\a.vi when loaded for the FPGA target.

External Links

• LabVIEW Help: Using Symbolic Paths