Can a executable find the path to itself?

I’m writing a short executable that will be run by both clicking on it and being called from another program (IDL). Is there a function that I can put in this executable that returns the path to itself? Since, “myprogram.exe” might be moved to a different location I don’t want to hard wire the path, but I want an outputted text file to end up in the same location as the executable. I’ve tried _fullpath, which returns the correct path if you double click on it, but returns the incorrect path if called from IDL.

Code:

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sprintf(szBuffer,_fullpath( NULL, "myprogram.exe", _MAX_PATH ));

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Double click on myprogram.exe -> C:\myprogram\ myprogram.exe :D

Call from IDL -> C:\Location_of_IDL_File\myprogram.exe :(

Any ideas, thanks,
Sulli_jj

try using something like this..

Code:

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char yourpath[BUFSIZE]

GetModuleFileName(NULL,yourpath,BUFSIZE);

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this will store the path to your exe as well as your exe's name.
hope I am understanding you...

Thanks g1i7ch, this works.

Actually all I really want is the directory path, but I can remove the "myprogram.exe" from the end of the returned string easily.

Again thanks,
sulli_jj

You can also use argv[0], which contains the name of the executable. On Linux, however, the path is sometimes something like "../bin/ls", so if you want a full path, you could try getcwd(), which returns the current working directory. Unless the working directory is different from the executable path.

You could just use "./filename" and set the current working directory to "." in the properties dialog box.