Best way to get exe folder path? - c++

Question

I found this in another forum that is supposed to give it to you. But I think this may not be the best way, also I think it results in a memory leak due to the array not being deleted. Is this true?
Also is this the best way? Best way being a cross platform command (if it doesn't exist then use Windows) that gives the folder directory directly.
std::string ExePath()
{
using namespace std;
char buffer[MAX_PATH];
GetModuleFileName(NULL, buffer, MAX_PATH);
string::size_type pos = string(buffer).find_last_of("\\/");
if (pos == string::npos)
{
return "";
}
else
{
return string(buffer).substr(0, pos);
}
}

Answer 1

There is no memory leak in your code, but there are some issues with it:
it is Windows-specific,
it works with local code-page and does not support arbitrary Unicode files names.
Unfortunately, there is no standard way of accomplishing this task just with C++ library, but here is a code that will work on Windows and Linux, and support Unicode paths as well. Also it utilizes std::filesystem library from C++17:
#include <filesystem>
#ifdef _WIN32
#include <windows.h>
#elif
#include <unistd.h>
#endif
std::filesystem::path GetExeDirectory()
{
#ifdef _WIN32
// Windows specific
wchar_t szPath[MAX_PATH];
GetModuleFileNameW( NULL, szPath, MAX_PATH );
#else
// Linux specific
char szPath[PATH_MAX];
ssize_t count = readlink( "/proc/self/exe", szPath, PATH_MAX );
if( count < 0 || count >= PATH_MAX )
return {}; // some error
szPath[count] = '\0';
#endif
return std::filesystem::path{ szPath }.parent_path() / ""; // to finish the folder path with (back)slash
}