SHRegGetPathA function (shlwapi.h)

Article
02/09/2023

Retrieves a file path from the registry, expanding environment variables as needed.

Syntax

LSTATUS SHRegGetPathA(
  [in]  HKEY   hKey,
  [in]  LPCSTR pcszSubKey,
  [in]  LPCSTR pcszValue,
  [out] LPSTR  pszPath,
        DWORD  dwFlags
);

Parameters

[in] hKey

Type: HKEY

A handle to a key that is currently open, or a registry root key.

[in] pcszSubKey

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string that contains the name of the subkey.

[in] pcszValue

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string that contains the name of the value that holds the unexpanded path string.

[out] pszPath

Type: LPTSTR

A buffer to hold the expanded path. You should set the size of this buffer to MAX_PATH to ensure that it is large enough to hold the returned string.

dwFlags

Type: DWORD

Reserved.

Return value

Type: LSTATUS

Returns ERROR_SUCCESS if successful, or a Windows error code otherwise.

Remarks

The data type of the specified registry value must be either REG_EXPAND_SZ or REG_SZ. If it has the REG_EXPAND_SZ type, any environment variables in the registry string will be expanded with ExpandEnvironmentStrings. If it has the REG_SZ data type, environment variables will not be expanded and the string pointed to by pszPath will be identical to the string in the registry.

The following environment strings will be replaced by their equivalent path.

Environment string	Folder
%USERPROFILE%	The current user's profile folder
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%	The All Users profile folder
%ProgramFiles%	The Program Files folder
%SystemRoot%	The system root folder
%SystemDrive%	The system drive letter

Note %USERPROFILE% is relative to the user making the call. This function does not work if the user is being impersonated from a service.

Note

The shlwapi.h header defines SHRegGetPath as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	shlwapi.h
Library	Shlwapi.lib
DLL	Shlwapi.dll (version 5.0 or later)

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