A running executable that modifies itself - c++

Question

I have a Visual Studio 2008 C++ project for Windows CE 5 where I would like the currently running executable to modify itself.
Specifically, I would like to be able to read/write some data stored within the exe file itself. I do not need (or wish to) modify executable code.
In regular windows, I could use a string resource and the UpdateResource function, but that doesn't exist in WinCE.
CreateFile, unfortunately, fails because the file is already in use.
Does anybody have any other suggestions?

Answer 1

First, why do you need to do this? You should be able to do this with other methods.
I'm not particularly familiar with Windows-CE, but if you need to, you can probably copy the file, edit the copy, delete the first, and then run the other. That's an inefficient way, but if you only need to do it once or twice in the span of the program and speed isn't a concern, I guess you could do it:
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char * argv[]) {
// Check if this IS the copy:
if (argv[0].find(argv[1]) != string::npos) {
system("taskkill -IM myOLDfile.exe"); // Stop the old one running,
system("del myOLDfile.exe"); // Then delete it.
}
ifstream myself(argv[0]); // argv[0] is the program itself
string fullcode;
string line;
if (file.is_open()) {
while (file.good()) {
getline(myself, line);
line.append("\n");
fullcode.append(line);
}
}
myself.close();
// Do whatever you need to do to the code here.
ofstream newcode("myNEWfile.exe");
newcode.write(fullcode);
newcode.close();
system("myNEWfile.exe myNEWfile.exe"); // Starts new file. Also, not a typo.
}
Good luck on your project!