PathMakePrettyA function (shlwapi.h)

Article
02/22/2024

Converts an all-uppercase path to all lowercase characters to give the path a consistent appearance.

Syntax

BOOL PathMakePrettyA(
  [in, out] LPSTR pszPath
);

Parameters

[in, out] pszPath

Type: LPTSTR

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

Return value

Type: BOOL

Returns TRUE if the path has been converted, or FALSE otherwise.

Remarks

This function only operates on paths that are entirely uppercase. For example: C:\WINDOWS will be converted to c:\windows, but c:\Windows will not be changed.

Examples

#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream.h>
#include "Shlwapi.h"

void main( void )
{
// Path name 1.
char buffer_1[ ] = "C:\\TEST\\FILE";
char *lpStr1;
lpStr1 = buffer_1;

// Path name 2.
char buffer_2[ ] = "c:\\test\\file";
char *lpStr2;
lpStr2 = buffer_2;

// Test path name 1.
    cout << "The content of the unconverted path is : " << lpStr1 << endl;
    cout << "The \"PathMakePretty\" function returns the value " 
         << PathMakePretty(lpStr1) << "  = TRUE & converts"  << endl;
    cout << "The content of the converted path is   : " << lpStr1 << endl;

// Test path name 2.
    cout << "\nThe content of the unconverted path is : " << lpStr2 << endl;
    cout << "The \"PathMakePretty\" function returns the value " 
         << PathMakePretty(lpStr2) << "  = FALSE & no conversion"  << endl;
    cout << "The content of the converted path is   : " << lpStr2 << endl;
}

OUTPUT:
=============
The content of the unconverted path is : C:\TEST\FILE
The "PathMakePretty" function returns the value 1  = TRUE & converts
The content of the converted path is   : C:\test\file

The content of the unconverted path is : c:\test\file
The "PathMakePretty" function returns the value 0  = FALSE & no conversion
The content of the converted path is   : c:\test\file

Note

The shlwapi.h header defines PathMakePretty 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 4.71 or later)

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