trying to delete a file in Temp dir using CreateProcessA - c++

Question

Hello I am trying to delete a file using following code:
CreateProcessA(NULL, (LPSTR)"del /f C:\\Users\\samee\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tempFile.txt", 0, 0, true, CREATE_NO_WINDOW, 0, 0, &si, &pi);
however this is not working. What am doing wrong here?

Answer 1

del is not an executable that you can run directly. It is a built-in command of the cmd.exe shell. So, you would need to run cmd.exe instead, using its /C or /K parameter to execute shell commands, eg:
char cmdLine[] = "cmd.exe /C del /f C:\\Users\\samee\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tempFile.txt";
CreateProcessA(NULL, cmdLine, NULL, NULL, FALSE, CREATE_NO_WINDOW, NULL, NULL, &si, &pi);
But why do that? The Win32 API has a DeleteFileA() function, you should use that instead, eg:
DeleteFileA("C:\\Users\\samee\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tempFile.txt");
Note that the /f parameter of del allows for deleting a read-only file. If DeleteFileA() fails because the file is read-only, then simply remove the read-only flag, eg:
char fileName[] = "C:\\Users\\samee\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tempFile.txt";
DWORD attr = GetFileAttributesA(fileName);
if ((attr != INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES) && (attr & FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY))
SetFileAttributesA(fileName, attr & ~FILE_ATTRIBUTE_READONLY);
DeleteFileA(fileName);