Question

How can I retrieve the current working directory of cmd.exe?

This seems possible. For example using ProcessExplorer, select CMD.exe, right click, properties, Image tab, ‘Current Directory’ relects the directory set using the CD or CHDIR commands.

I’ve looked at the .NET Process and ProcessStartInfo classes (ProcessStartInfo.WorkingDirectory always returns ”) and can’t seem to find a way of determining this. Nothing at PInvoke stands out either.

As an example I’m looking to programmatically be able to say something like: Process.GetCurrentWorkingDirectory(processID) where processID is a Windows process ID of another running process.

Is there any solution, WinAPI or .NET?

[Update]

Reason for asking this question:

I’ve used the ‘Command Prompt Explorer Bar’ for a while and it’s great except if I ‘CD’ to a new directory, the current Explorer window does not also change. (ie the Sync is only 1 way from Explorer to the commmand prompt). I’m looking to make this 2 way.

Answer 1

Untested, a possible approach:

Create a DLL with a DllMain that uses GetThreadStartInformation() to find the address of the buffer, and then uses GetCurrentDirectory to populate it. This should be OK, because both of those functions are in kernel32, which is always present. You will need to have some structure there to return success/failure.

1. Get a handle to the cmd.exe process.
2. Allocate some memory there (VirtualAllocEx)
3. Put the path to your DLL in the memory. (WriteProcessMemory)
4. Load your dll into the cmd.exe address space. (CreateRemoteThread with an entry point of LoadLibrary, the argument is the memory you allocated earlier.)
5. WaitForSingleObject followed by GetExitCodeThread(), gives you the HMODULE of your DLL in the cmd.exe process.
6. ReadProcessMemory to get the current directory.
7. Unload your dll from the cmd.exe address space. CreateRemote Thread with an entry point of FreeLibrary, the argument is the HMODULE.
8. WaitForSingleObject to wait for the DLL to unload.

Broad sketch: Details left as an excercise! Risks: Allocates memory in the cmd.exe address space, changes its state. Care must be taken with the functions called in DllMain.