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Launching Windows programs from a C++ program

Hi,
I asked a question a while ago that was answered, but I have found that I can only launch programs that can be launched from a MS-DOS prompt. My question is how do you launch Win programs from a C++ program? Like, for example, how would you launch Excel from your program.

Thanks.
Ian.

mnashadka

To open files in, for example, you can use ShellExecute; to launch processes you can use CreateProcess.

mnashadka

Sorry, I meant "in Excel, for example"

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RattleSnake

The following function "Execute" uses the CreateProcess function to call a program by a command line string. Therefor, you will have to quote the path to the executable if it contains whitespaces, as sampled in the main() routine I copied as well. The boolean return value indicates the success of CreateProcess, but I didn't check it here because ... well because it works ...

BOOL Execute(LPCSTR strPath)
{
PROCESS_INFORMATION pInfo;
STARTUPINFO sInfo;

GetStartupInfo(&sInfo);

return CreateProcess(NULL,(char*) strPath,
NULL,NULL,TRUE,NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
NULL,NULL,&sInfo,&pInfo);
}

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
Execute("\"c:\\winnt\\system32\\ping.exe\" www.google.com"); // path to ping.exe quoted
return 0;
}

tinchos

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