Obtaining program files dir

[WilliamGS]

Hello everybody. I need the default program files directory ("C:\Program Files" or "C:\Archivos de programa" in spanish Windows), there are funtions to obtain another system dirs like GetCurrentDirectory(), GetSystemDirectory(), GetWindowsDirectory(); is there a function to obtain the program files dir?

Thanks in advance,
William GS

 

[cpjust]

I thought there was, but I didn't find one in MSDN.
Try the ExpandEnvironmentStrings() function and pass it the "%ProgramFiles%" environment variable. I only have an English machine, so I don't know if the Environment variable names are also localized?

 

[MKuiper]

Here's a function i once wrote to get it.
It tries the following:
1. like cpjust wrote, using the ProgramFiles environment variable. My machine is Dutch and it isn't localized.
2. if step 1 failed, call SHGetFolderA from shfolder.dll. Because this dll might not be present on some (older) systems, i call it dynamic to make sure the program runs even when the dll is not present. Note: if you are using unicode you should call SHGetFolderW instead of SHGetFolderA.
3. if step 2 also failed, find the windows directory, and replace everything after the last '\' with 'Program Files' and check if that is a valid directory.

#include <windows.h>

extern "C" BOOL GetProgramFilesDirectory ( char *Dir, DWORD cbDir )
{
  char * ProgramFiles    = "ProgramFiles";
  if ( GetEnvironmentVariable ( ProgramFiles, Dir, cbDir ))
     { return TRUE; }

  char * SHFolderDll     = "shfolder.dll";
  char * SHGetFolderPath = "SHGetFolderPathA";
  char   pf[MAX_PATH]    = "";

  HMODULE hm = LoadLibrary ( SHFolderDll );

  if ( hm != NULL )
     { BOOL fSuccess = FALSE;
       FARPROC fp = GetProcAddress ( hm, SHGetFolderPath );
       if ( fp != NULL )
          { char   *cpf = &pf[0];
            HRESULT hResult;
            DWORD StPtr;
            __asm { mov  StPtr, esp
                    push cpf
                    push 0
                    push 0
                    push 38
                    push 0
                    call fp
                    mov  hResult, eax
                    mov  esp, StPtr }
            if ( SUCCEEDED ( hResult ))
               { if ( (DWORD)(lstrlen ( pf )) < cbDir )
                    { fSuccess = TRUE;
                      lstrcpy ( Dir, pf ); } } }
       FreeLibrary ( hm );
       return fSuccess; }

  if ( !GetWindowsDirectory ( pf, sizeof ( pf )))
     { return FALSE; }

  int i1 = (int)(lstrlen(pf)) - 1;
  while ( i1 >= 0 && pf[i1] != '\\' )
     { i1--; }

  if ( i1 < 0 )
     { return FALSE; }

  lstrcpy ( &pf[i1], "\\Program Files" );

  DWORD Attr = GetFileAttributes ( pf );
  if ( Attr == 0xffffffff ||
       ( Attr & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY ) != FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY )
     { return FALSE; }

  if ( (DWORD)(lstrlen ( pf )) < cbDir )
     { lstrcpy ( Dir, pf );
       return TRUE; }

  return FALSE; }

Marcel

 

[AtomicChip]

Uhrm...

I've never actually done this before, but it seems that it's a terribly easy thing to do... As I've never done this specific thing before, I may be way off base, but it seems that you can query programfiles environment variable to get this info...

#include <cstdio>
#include <cstdlib>

int main()
{
	const char* env = getenv( "programfiles" );
	printf( env );
}

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