What Windows API functions are available to execute command prompt's functionality? For example, I like to execute dir command and want to show the output in GUI without using cmd.exe in Windows.
You can start cmd /c dir S:\ome\Path from your process and grab the output. Otherwise it's not possible. But if you're not interested in particular formatting details of dir then you're probably better off just enumerating files/directories and display them.
The dir command is built into the cmd.exe, it's not a separate executable. There's no way of executing it short of running cmd.exe.
EDIT: As for the displaying of results, you need to fill in the STARTUPINFO.hStdXXX members, probably using an anonymous pipe. See this example.
For a console app you can use popen(), but things are by no means so easy from a GUI app. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682499%28VS.85%29.aspx for one approach.
If you want a listing of files in a given folder see this question which describes how to achieve it, using windows api or a more generic boost approach.
Everything the Windows command line does is done through the Win32 APIs.
For example, with regard to "dir", FindFirstFile() and FindNextFile() will give you the contents of a directory.
For any given command, you will need to figure out which APIs/function calls are in use and then learn how to use them yourself in your own code.
Related
I need to make a windows console application file explorer using c++ , but I couldn't figure out how to use functions to display files nor how am I going to make it look like knowing that console application doesn't support buttons or displaying lists , specially that the project must be based on windows.h library. any tip, advice or suggestion may be helpful , thank you !
Have a look at http://www.martinbroadhurst.com/list-the-files-in-a-directory-in-c.html and scroll down to method 4. There you can see a possible implementation of a read-directory function. You should store a default start path, implement some console arguments as commands, then, whenever the user writes a command (for example goUp) ,change the path accordingly (in this case, remove the last foldername), call the function, which reads the directory, again and output all files in that folder.
I was looking at a project that someone wanted done and in order to do it I need to edit Windows' Start Up Programs. I am unsure of where to begin looking. What I really need is just a reference to some Windows API functions that will let me do this.
Thanks
Startup programs is just a directory, I don't think there are any specific functions for it. You should be able to create shortcuts inside and that should be it.
c:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\
As Nikola Smiljanić says the Startup area is just a directory with file shortcuts in it. However it is dangerous to use a hardcoded path because this changes with different versions of Windows.
You can get the path to the startup folder with the SHGetFolderPath function and CSIDL_STARTUP as a parameter.
Is it possible to embed system command line right inside your application window?
I want to be able to have the command line take some space on the bottom of my C++ application, and my application to take the above space. Ideally it should work on Mac, Linux and Windows, but for starters Windows is the primary goal as I am developing on it.
Speaking for Windows, the Windows console window is "special" in that it gets special treatment, different than any other window on the system. You will not succeed in manipulating it for your own use. For a good example, try using Spy++ on a console window.
Note that the window created with AllocConsole is not a command-line interpreter, it's just a console window.
You should implement your own console window, and as far as interpreting the commands I can think of a few options to explore depending on what you expect, behavior-wise and complexity-wise:
Delegate commands to a hidden cmd.exe
Interpret commands yourself
There are probably open-source solutions for command line interpreting.
In Windows, you can do that using some WinAPI functions like ShellExecute and CreateProcess (there are a few others that I don't remember). You get the command string from your GUI, pass it to one of these WinAPI functions, then send the output back to your GUI.
You want to do this on multiple platforms, so I would suggest making a generic module (class or namespace of functions, whatever fits you best) that allows using the OS terminal agnostic of the actual underling OS. Then. when you want to port your app to another OS, you just change the implementation of this module.
Note: Boost has (had?) a library under development that made running shell commands easier, Boost.Process. But it's currently on version 0.4 and hasn't been updated since October 4, 2010 (even though its status is still "on going").
Writing a program in c++ and I want to issue a system command from the system() function but I don't want the user to see the command (because the command includes a pwd) in the executable window. I need to copy a file from the user's directory onto the server without allowing user access to the server or displaying the pwd. Figured having a .exe that does this is the easiest way.
Ex:
system("FILETRANSFER_SW.exe -pw helloWORLD11!# C:/temp.txt F:/tempfolder/")
But the executable window is showing this command, hence defeating the purpose of trying to hide the password.
I tried issuing
system("#echo OFF")
at the beginning of the program but that does not suppress the following commands, they still show up in the executable window.
Any suggestions?
Thanks...
The command line of running processes is considered public information in most operating systems.
Therefore it is a very bad idea to pass passwords on the command line.
There are two common workarounds to this problem, both of which require the support of the executable being called:
instead of passing the username/password on the command line, pass the name of a file containing the username/password
re-set the command line of the running process from within the called executable.
The first solution is easy and universally possible, the second one has a race condition and is harder to implement, because there's no cross-platform way to do it (on some OSes, changing argv will help).
I'm assuming from your command line that you're using Windows. If it doesn't need to be portable I would suggest you use the CreateProcess() API instead of calling system().
The CreateProcess() API can take a command-line and you can set up the STARTUP_INFORMATION parameter to hide the new process window (wShowWindow = SW_HIDE).
The command line will be hidden from the casual user, but as others have pointed out, it's not that hard to retrieve. Since you are creating a new process, I would suggest writing the sensitive data to that process' standard input. That way the process can just read it and proceed normally.
Using CreateProcess() API will hide the sensitive data from a user, but a power user can easily get the command line associated with the process using a free utilty, e.g. Process Explorer
Another solution is to send the password between your programs, encrypted with something like 3DES, or AES.
You could use a pipe to comunicate between both programs, and don't use the command line at all.
But any of this schemes is not really secure they can be circumvent rather easily. If you want more security you should use some kind of challenge-response protocol with the server.
I'm using ShellExecuteEx to execute a command in C. Is there a way to use ShellExecuteEx and capture standard in/out/err?
Note: I don't want to use CreateProcess.
I use to found the problem like you.
Suppose, You want to capture the output from STDOUT that it's generated by dir command and save the captured into out.txt.
Use text editor and type dir > out.txt and save it with mybat.bat (*.bat, don't *.txt)
In your c/c++ program, type WinExec("mybat.bat", SW_HIDE); and run your application.
Open the out.txt you will see the name of folders and files in current directory.
Also, you can run any executable files (*.exe) at the same way as follow.
xxx.exe > out.txt
I hope it can be helps you.
Sorry, my English really not good.
No. The only way to do this is to use CreatePipe and CreateProcess. See the MSDN article here
That's not possible. ShellExecute(Ex) basically executes the application in the context of the shell - so you are basically doing what explorer does.
Capturing STDIN and STDOUT is something the shell generally doesn't do, you you will have to go the CreateProcess route (which, after all, is what ShellExecute eventually calls if the file to execute is a program and the verb is 'open').
As mentioned by pilif and Bob, you need to use CreateProcess.
If you want code that wraps it all up for you, I do have a class for this exact issue at:
http://code.google.com/p/kgui/source/browse/trunk/kguithread.cpp.
The class (kGUICallThread) handles Linux, macOS and Windows versions. The code is licensed LGPL.
CreateProcess is what most people use.
You may also want to consider using _popen
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/96ayss4b%28VS.80%29.aspx