Alex Rivera | Logout

Can a Win32 console application detect if it has been run from the explorer or not?

Asked 2009-02-04T10:25:01.330
40

I have to create a console application which needs certain parameters. If they are missing or wrong I print out an error message.

Now the problem: If someone starts the program from the explorer by double-clicking the console window disappears immediately. (But the application is not entirely useless from the explorer, you could drag files onto it and it would work)

I could always wait for a keypress, but I don't want that if the user did start it from the command line.

Is there some way to distinguish between these situations?

winapi console
Edit
Report

1 Answer

8

GetConsoleTitle()

I've seen code which performs

if (!GetConsoleTitle(NULL, 0) && GetLastError() == ERROR_SUCCESS) {
    // Console
} else {
    // GUI
}

BUT... I've found that AttachConsole() is more helpful

In C++ (off the top of my head, and I'm no C++ programmer)

if (!AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS)) {
    // GUI
} else {
    // Console, and you have a handle to the console that already exists.
}

Is more effective. Additionally, if you find yourself in a GUI environment and would like to stay there as long as you can, but later find something catastrophic has happened that could really use a dump to a console window (you can't be arsed writing an edit box window to lot it to or attach to the NT System log and throw up a MessageBox()) well then you can AllocConsole() later on in the process, when GUI methods have failed.

answered 2010-08-10T12:11:23.477

Your Answer