Reference directory install path in registry value using Wix

Question

I want to save the path of my application, installed with wix, in the windows registry. I tried the following:

<RegistryValue Root="HKLM" Key="Software\company\InstallLocation" Value="[#INSTALLLOCATION]" Type="string" Action="write" />

where INSTALLLOCATION is the Directory Id of the folder in Wix, but this doesn't work. It seems that the [#id] syntax is only for files...

I saw the following question but the blog he references seemingly is no more:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/521825/saving-install-path-to-registry

Answer 1

Just remove the # sign, leave only [INSTALLLOCATION] and it should work. The # symbol referes to file keys. Without the # it refers to a property and all directories become properties. See the article about Formatted data type for more details.