Question

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Extracting the current executable name

I created a program that reads configuration from ini file, the name of that file should be identical to name of executable but of course with its extension. So If I name it myprogram.exe the config should be myprogram.ini, and if I change name of the exe after compilation it should look accorting to its new name.

I know that it is possible to get program name from argv[0] but this works only if it starts from command line, when it is clicked in explorer this array is empty.

As I read through the answers here I think it has to do something with this function: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10572632/393087 – But I can’t find any good example of usage of that function, I’m very beginner to c++ and general function definitions (like that presented on microsoft pages) are too hard for me to understand, but when I get a working example it is a snap for me to comprehend.

Answer 1

#include <windows.h>
#include <Shlwapi.h>
// remember to link against shlwapi.lib
// in VC++ this can be done with
#pragma comment(lib, "Shlwapi.lib")

// ...

TCHAR buffer[MAX_PATH]={0};
TCHAR * out;
DWORD bufSize=sizeof(buffer)/sizeof(*buffer);
// Get the fully-qualified path of the executable
if(GetModuleFileName(NULL, buffer, bufSize)==bufSize)
{
    // the buffer is too small, handle the error somehow
}
// now buffer = "c:\whatever\yourexecutable.exe"

// Go to the beginning of the file name
out = PathFindFileName(buffer);
// now out = "yourexecutable.exe"

// Set the dot before the extension to 0 (terminate the string there)
*(PathFindExtension(out)) = 0;
// now out = "yourexecutable"

Now in out you have a pointer to the “base name” of your executable; keep in mind that it points inside buffer, so when buffer goes out of scope out is not valid anymore.