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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T01:17:17+00:00

I have not yet found a definitive answer about this. I am trying to

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I have not yet found a definitive answer about this. I am trying to have access to files in subfolders from my .EXE. When I have asked before, people tell me to use the absolute location i.e. “c:/game/info/” if I wanted to access something in /info/

But it is completely unreasonable for me or anyone to assume that someone is going to use their program from the same directory. What if the user only has a D drive? That sort of thing.

So my question is: how can I access a file in a subdirectory from my executable without relying on the entire path?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Your title says “Windows”, so I’ll give a WinAPI-specific answer.

    On Windows, you can find your application directory with GetModuleFileName(NULL, ...), and PathRemoveFileSpec. Then PathAppend will make the full path to your data files.

    Or you can store the data inside you .exe file as Win32 resources, so they never get separated.

    Please note that this approach generally works only for read-only access to data files. If you try to write files in your application directory, you might be blocked by ACLs (depending on install location and local security settings of the computer).

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