Environment: VC6.0 SP2

I saw Michael Taupitz's idea of creating Links (shortcuts) and I realized that there are many times when we stumble across a link in command prompt mode and we have no idea what this .lnk file points to.

Here's a function I wrote which returns the Target and Arguments of a .lnk file in a CString. Hope you find it helpful.

CString GetShortcutTarget(const CString LinkFileName)
{
	HRESULT hres;
	
	CString Link, Temp = LinkFileName;
	Temp.MakeLower();
	if (Temp.Find(".lnk")==-1)           //Check if the name ends with .lnk
		Link = LinkFileName + ".lnk";   //if not, append it
	else
		Link = LinkFileName;

	CString Info;
	Info.Empty();
	
	IShellLink* psl;

	//Create the ShellLink object
	hres = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_ShellLink, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER,
				IID_IShellLink, (LPVOID*) &psl);
	
	if (SUCCEEDED(hres))
	{
		IPersistFile* ppf;
		//Bind the ShellLink object to the Persistent File
		hres = psl->QueryInterface( IID_IPersistFile, (LPVOID *) &ppf);
		if (SUCCEEDED(hres))
		{
			WORD wsz[MAX_PATH];
			//Get a UNICODE wide string wsz from the Link path
			MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, MB_PRECOMPOSED, Link, -1, wsz, 					    MAX_PATH);
			
			//Read the link into the persistent file
			hres = ppf->Load(wsz, 0);
			
			if (SUCCEEDED(hres))
			{
				//Read the target information from the link object
				//UNC paths are supported (SLGP_UNCPRIORITY)
				psl->GetPath(Temp.GetBuffer(1024), 1024, NULL, 				             SLGP_UNCPRIORITY);
				Temp.ReleaseBuffer();
				Info = Temp;

				//Read the arguments from the link object
				psl->GetArguments(Temp.GetBuffer(1024), 1024);
				Temp.ReleaseBuffer();
				Info += " " + Temp;
			}
		}
	}
	psl->Release();
	//Return the Target and the Argument as a CString
	return Info;
}

Date Posted: 13/02/99

Comments:

• How about a DLL to do it? - Daniel Foote (2001/05/04)
• Trouble with links to MS system EXEs - Steve Carpenter (2001/03/18)
• How to run shortcut from my app, just like ordinary .EXE file? - Slava Herasimau (1999/12/15)
• CoInitialize needed? - John McManus (1999/07/18)
• call to ppf->Load(wsz, 0); alwayse return -21... something something - Eforg (1999/07/13)
• CreateShortcut - Additions / Fixes / Enhancements - Firo (1999/03/08)
• Getting a Shortcut (.lnk) - Target and Arguments - Mario Mercea (1999/02/22)
• Other Link properties - Eric Crahen (1999/02/22)
• ppf->Release()? - Anatoly Ivasyuk (1999/02/14)

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