CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsdll
Rollie
Rollie

Reputation: 4752

How can I find the full path of a DLL without actually calling LoadLibrary?

If I call LoadLibrary("foo.dll"), it will look in various locations on the system, choose the best match, and load that library. I would like to find the full path to this file before actually loading it. Is there a simple way to do this? My google-fu has thus far failed me, but it seems intuitive there is some function to do this. My current solution is to actually call LoadLibraryEx with the LOAD_LIBRARY_AS_DATAFILE flag, then GetModuleFileName on the result; after this I assume I would have to release the library and reload it without this flag, but this seems like a roundabout method. Is there a better way? ResolvePathFromDllName perhaps?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1590

Answers (1)

Ken White
Ken White

Reputation: 125688

You can use SearchPath, but if you're planning on actually calling LoadLibrary later it's not recommended (see the Remarks section on the linked page (and quoted below in this answer) regarding possibly returning the wrong results).

Note also that the search order is slightly different than that of LoadLibrary, because it doesn't make the same presumptions at the start of the search that are documented in LoadLibrary. It strictly searches the PATH as its documentation says it does; it doesn't automatically look first in the same folders. See the paragraph in Remarks:

The SearchPath function is not recommended as a method of locating a .dll file if the intended use of the output is in a call to the LoadLibrary function. This can result in locating the wrong .dll file because the search order of the SearchPath function differs from the search order used by the LoadLibrary function. If you need to locate and load a .dll file, use the LoadLibrary function.

So the proper answer to this question would be to use LoadLibrary in the first place (as you are) to make sure you're finding the same DLL you'll be loading later.

Upvotes: 2

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