PathFindOnPathA function (shlwapi.h)

Article
02/22/2024

Searches for a file.

Syntax

BOOL PathFindOnPathA(
  [in, out]      LPSTR   pszPath,
  [in, optional] PZPCSTR ppszOtherDirs
);

Parameters

[in, out] pszPath

Type: LPTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string of length MAX_PATH that contains the file name for which to search. If the search is successful, this parameter is used to return the fully qualified path name.

[in, optional] ppszOtherDirs

Type: LPCTSTR*

An optional, null-terminated array of directories to be searched first. This value can be NULL.

Return value

Type: BOOL

Returns TRUE if successful, or FALSE otherwise.

Remarks

PathFindOnPath searches for the file specified by pszFile. If no directories are specified in ppszOtherDirs, it attempts to find the file by searching standard directories such as System32 and the directories specified in the PATH environment variable. To expedite the process or enable PathFindOnPath to search a wider range of directories, use the ppszOtherDirs parameter to specify one or more directories to be searched first. If more than one file has the name specified by pszFile, PathFindOnPath returns the first instance it finds.

Note

The shlwapi.h header defines PathFindOnPath as an alias that 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 is 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 4.71 or later)

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