PathCommonPrefixW function (shlwapi.h)

Article
11/20/2024

Compares two paths to determine if they share a common prefix. A prefix is one of these types: "C:\", ".", "..", "..\".

Syntax

int PathCommonPrefixW(
  [in]            LPCWSTR pszFile1,
  [in]            LPCWSTR pszFile2,
  [out, optional] LPWSTR  achPath
);

Parameters

[in] pszFile1

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string of length MAX_PATH that contains the first path name.

[in] pszFile2

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to a null-terminated string of length MAX_PATH that contains the second path name.

[out, optional] achPath

Type: LPTSTR

A pointer to a buffer that receives the common prefix. This buffer must be at least MAX_PATH characters in size. If there is no common prefix, it is set to NULL.

Return value

Type: int

Returns the count of common prefix characters in the path. If the output buffer pointer is not NULL, then these characters are copied to the output buffer.

Remarks

Note

The shlwapi.h header defines PathCommonPrefix 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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