How to obtain the program name in a Windows-based application and in a Win32-based application

MORE INFORMATION

Windows-based and Win32-based application use WinMain() as the entry point. WinMain() has the lpszCmdLine parameter for the command line arguments, but this parameter does not include the program name. However, you can still get to the program name through the variable __argv.

In a 32-bit application you can just reference __argv directly. It is declared in stdlib.h

In a 16-bit application, __argv is not declared and you will need to declare it. Include the following declaration in your source or header file.

   #ifdef __cplusplus
   extern "C"
   #endif
   extern char ** __argv;
					

To test this out, you can view __argv[0] by including the following line in your application.

   MessageBox( NULL, __argv[0], "__argv[0]", MB_OK );
					

Note argv[0] will contain a pointer to the program name as it was executed from the command line or Program Manager: either qualified or unqualified.