Thread: need help passing keystroke to program

I need to write a program that will do the following:

1. open image file using mspaint.exe
2. Then pass keystroke "cntrl-s" to mspaint.exe
3. Then close mspaint.exe

4. and repeat this process till all image files have been processed.


Here is my code so far

Code:

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
STARTUPINFO          si = { sizeof(si) };
PROCESS_INFORMATION  pi;
char                 szExe[] = "mspaint.exe";
char                 buf[4444];

if(CreateProcess(0, szExe, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, &si, &pi))
{
   // optionally wait for process to finish
   //WaitForSingleObject(pi.hProcess, INFINITE);

   CloseHandle(pi.hProcess);
   CloseHandle(pi.hThread);
}
}

I have no problem opening the images, but have not been able to automatically pass the keystoke "cntrl-s" to mspaint.

I have looked at keyboard dumps and other functions but have not gotton far with this part of program. I have no formal coding education so I am a complete novice here. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Douglas