Reading in Files on SmartPhone Emulator

The other day I made a post on http://forums.microsoft.com about trying to load input files on the SmartPhone SE Emulator, which you can find here. The problem, of course, is trying to figure out how the SmartPhone Emulator maps a portion of the desktop file system to its file system. The response I got was,

The easiest way is to use folder sharing. Under File\Configure\General Tab set the folder sharing directory to any directory on your desktop. Put your text files into that directory and they will be accessible from "\Storage Card\" inside the Windows Mobile OS.

Though these instructions were either for VS2003 or inaccurate -- I got the point. In VS2005 you can do something similar by going to the File Menu -> Tools -> Options -> Device Tools -> Devices -> Smartphone 2003 SE Emulator -> Properties -> Emulator Options. The Emulator Options button opens a Emulator Properties dialog box. In the General tab of this dialog, you can input a "Shared folder" path, which I did (Incidentally, if you hit F1 on this tab for Help, you will note that the only function not explained in the Help is the "Shared folder"! Hmm, maybe it's supposed to be self-explanatory).

However, we're not done yet. We still have to figure out a way to refer to this "Shared folder" in your code -- This is something I have yet to figure out. I tried one thing this morning, which was to create a file programtically on the SmartPhone Emulator and see if I could find it on the desktop. I ran this simple test code:

string FILE_NAME = "MyFile.txt";
if (File.Exists(FILE_NAME))
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} already exists.", FILE_NAME);
}
StreamWriter sw = File.CreateText(FILE_NAME);
sw.WriteLine("This is my file.");
sw.Close();

After the code completed, I could not find the file anywhere on my desktop's filesystem. I also tried "\\Storage\\MyFile.txt" and "\\Storage Card\\MyFile.txt" for FILE_NAME but no dice. If you create FileInfo or DirectoryInfo objects to look at the file, it appears to be using the SmartPhone-type filesystem (e.g. root dir is \ instead of, say, c:\).

Update (July 5th 2005, 3:35PM): As Vladimir's comment suggests, he followed up on his original reply to me on the message boards here. A copy of the post follows:

The directions were for VS2005 DE for configuration of the running instance of the emulator. There are three emulator configurations that exist - global, local saved and instance. The Global configuration is what you set under Tools\Options\Device Tools\Pick Platform\Properties\Emulator Options. The global configuration will be applied to an emulator if there is no local saved state. If you have created a local saved state - the global configuration is ignored until you clear the saved state. The instance configuration is accessed after the emulator is started via File\Configure (on the emulator itself) and is only applied to the instance that is running.

So if you start the emulator and click on the emulator File menu, select Configure option and then select General Tab - you should see the "Shared Folder" textbox.

The folder is accessed as "\Storage Card\". My guess is that you changed your global configuration but it was not applied because you had a local saved state. You can verify that the shared folder works correctly by craddling your emulator with Device Emulator Manager and using ActiveSync to browse the filesystem.

I tried this and it works perfectly.