CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++cvisual-studiowinapi
user3267146
user3267146

Reputation: 327

Program doesn't run - it opens and closes

I have a problem with my main program to which after all the calls I make after running the program it just opens then closes. It doesn't find any error in my code or anything, so I tried creating a new project and it does the same thing with no error.

I even tried example code:

int APIENTRY WinMain (HINSTANCE ...)
    ShellExecute(NULL, (LPCWSTR)"open", (LPCWSTR)"cmd.exe", NULL, NULL, SW_SHOW);

and it still just opens and closes. What is the issue here? I can provide the output log if necessary but I have no idea.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 136

Answers (1)

David Heffernan
David Heffernan

Reputation: 612954

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about opening and closing. But this code is very wrong:

ShellExecute(NULL, (LPCWSTR)"open", (LPCWSTR)"cmd.exe", 
    NULL, NULL, SW_SHOW);

The casts are no good. The two string literals are pointers to arrays of char casting them to const wchar_t* doesn't change what they are. It just asks the compiler to trust that you know better than it does. You don't. They are really not const wchar_t*. All your cast achieves is to allow you to break type safety and convert an informative compile time error into a cryptic run time failure. Until you have a deep understanding of the language you should refrain from casting.

You need to use wide literals:

ShellExecute(NULL, L"open", L"cmd.exe", NULL, NULL, SW_SHOW);

You also appear to be doing no error checking. That's quite hard with ShellExecute. Try ShellExecuteEx instead and take heed of the value it returns.

Upvotes: 5

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