mame & mameui in same folder directory ok?

I thought I remember reading a long time ago, a mame dev said not to put a mameui and mame in the same folder/directory because it will mess certain things up. But I might be wrong. Can anyone confirm, that installing a mame & mameui in the same folder/directory is ok or not?

I'm not a MAME guru now but I'm one of those who like checking if things are as claimed.

I did the following:
The current version of MAME and MAMEUI unpacked into separate new directories.
I took the MAME version as a reference and created MD5 files from all files.
I have compared these with the MAMEUI version and can say with certainty that all files
are the same except for the emulator itself.

MAMEUI has a few more directories than MAME.
I have always unpacked the MAMEUI version and pushed from the MAME version only the
EXE file into the root directory of MAMEUI.

The configuration of both emulators does not overwrite the files of the other version.
You must configure each Emulator itself.

However, the prerequisite is that both versions are identical. So MAME 206 and MAMEUI 206.
For verification, I always use the DAT file from MAME.

I hope you can take advantage of this.
I have both versions in a directory and have not had any problems with it so far.

Maybe, a guru can reply to this thread. I would be interested if I should go wrong with my
description.

Cheers

You can but, keep in mind both exes share some directories like nvram, cfg, ini and sta. Those files will be overwritten by the last exe used, and the results could be unexpected or undesired.

Basically, MAMEUI is MAME patched with a Win32 UI, so it uses the same directory structure plus some more required by the UI (icons, additional config, etc). So of course it's not recommended at all to install both in the same folder. The rom structure and version is the same tho.

OK guys thank you both for the enlightenment.

I came to the following decision. I have a folder that contains the relevant files, roms, samples, artworks, etc.
and now keep both emulators separate and configure only the paths that are relevant in the respective emulator.

Thus, each emulator has its own directory and can save what it wants there.

Cheers

Thanks for the info guys. The the point made about the nvram and the .ini that are shared it is what I was thinking too. I will put them in separate folders to be safe.

 Why?

If I play game X on mameui and then the same game on mame why would I want settings or saves separate?

Simple, for example savestates can fail or nvram can get corrupted. But your computer won't explode anyway...

Yes, it should work fine to have both in the same folder. BUT it's most important that they are the same version.