Question

In Visual Studio 2010 C++, I am reading argv[0] to get the working directory.

In debug mode it is definitely showing the full path of the directory and the exe file name itself (as expected)

In release mode it ONLY has the program .exe name, rather than the full working path.

1. why?
2. How to get working directory?

Answer 1

MSVC will place the command used to launch the executable into argv[0] – this has nothing to do with the current working directory.

For example, if the command used to launch foo.exe is:

• foo, and the executable i found by searching the path, argv[0] will be foo
• c:\foos-dir\foo, (the path will is not searched) argv[0] will be c:\foos-dir\foo
• foo.exe, argv[0] will be foo.exe

etc.

You should probably get the current working directory using the Win32 GetCurrentDirectory() API or the _getcwd() runtime function.

Here’s a short example using GetCurrentDirectory():

TCHAR buffer[128];           
DWORD const buffer_chars = sizeof(buffer)/sizeof(buffer[0]);

DWORD result = GetCurrentDirectory( buffer_chars, buffer);

if ((result == 0) || (result >= buffer_chars)) {
    puts("problem getting the working directory");        
    exit(1);
}

printf( "Current working directory: %s\n", buffer);