New Console Window

I am currently working on an 'ecosystem' program in console.

It is going well all except for one thing...

I would like it if when the user pressed a predefined key a new console window/program would pop up and would scroll through the information/statistics of the other program.

Pulling information from the other program should be easy enough with the usual file i/o, but how do I get a new window to pop up?

Btw I am using Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0

Not sure if this is doable, but one can always dream ;)

CreateProcess.

Just to be clear, as far as I know, each win32 program can only have one console window at any given time... although, you can have as many 'real' windows as you want.

You could also go "low-tech" with system().

gg

Man that CreateProcess deal is totally raping me...

so many offshoots...and of course MSDN always has a nice way of explaining everything ;P

but ill get it...it will just take me a while and quite a few tries...

but thanks!

If this is any help, here's some code to start and stop a process.

Code:

---

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>

HANDLE StartProcess(char *sExe)
{
        BOOLEAN bResult = FALSE;
        STARTUPINFO SI;
        PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;

        SI.cb = sizeof(STARTUPINFO);
        SI.lpReserved = NULL;
        SI.lpDesktop=NULL;
        SI.lpTitle = (char*) sExe;
        SI.dwX = 400;
        SI.dwY = 200;
        SI.cbReserved2=0;
        SI.lpReserved2=NULL;
        SI.dwFlags= STARTF_USEPOSITION;
        SI.wShowWindow=SW_SHOWNORMAL; 
        SI.hStdOutput=GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
        SI.hStdInput=GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE);
        SI.hStdError=GetStdHandle(STD_ERROR_HANDLE);

        bResult = CreateProcess ((LPTSTR)sExe,               
                                                (LPTSTR)NULL,                               
                                                (LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES)NULL,
                                                (LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES)NULL,
                                                (BOOL) TRUE,                               
                                                (DWORD) CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE,
                        GetEnvironmentStrings(),       
                                                NULL,                                               
                                                (LPSTARTUPINFO)&SI,                       
                                                (LPPROCESS_INFORMATION)&pi       
                                                );
        return pi.hProcess;
}

int main()
{
        HANDLE h;

        printf("Starting process\n");
        Sleep(1000);

        if( h = StartProcess("test2.exe") )
        {
                printf("Process started\n");
                Sleep(5000);
                TerminateProcess(h, 0);
                printf("process terminated\n");
        }
        else
                printf("Failed to start process\n");

        return 0;
}

---

Oh yea that helps alot

cept one thing that doesnt compute...is the

Code:

---

CreateProcess ((LPTSTR)sExe

---

what is sExe?

I guess I can run about looking for it...

Thanks for all of the other stuff though, it really helps having a template to compare to.

>what is sExe?
just the string of the filename past to the StartProcess() function. StartProcess(char *sExe)

You could just pass the filename directly the CreateProcess() function instead.

Code:

---

CreateProcess ((LPTSTR) "Test2.exe",

---

Learning how to use CreateProcess() is good and all, but if you're simply going to use file I/O to communicate between the processes, system() is alot easier to call/use.

gg

Yea im sure system is alot easier...but Im not really programming the ecosystem just to do it...its so I can learn as much as possible. So CreateProcess is probably the way to go.

Thanks for all the help~

While you're learning, there's a "mid-tech" solution as well.

gg