VerQueryValueA function (winver.h)

Article
02/09/2023

Retrieves specified version information from the specified version-information resource. To retrieve the appropriate resource, before you call VerQueryValue, you must first call the GetFileVersionInfoSize function, and then the GetFileVersionInfo function.

Syntax

BOOL VerQueryValueA(
  [in]  LPCVOID pBlock,
  [in]  LPCSTR  lpSubBlock,
  [out] LPVOID  *lplpBuffer,
  [out] PUINT   puLen
);

Parameters

[in] pBlock

Type: LPCVOID

The version-information resource returned by the GetFileVersionInfo function.

[in] lpSubBlock

Type: LPCTSTR

The version-information value to be retrieved. The string must consist of names separated by backslashes (\) and it must have one of the following forms.

\

The root block. The function retrieves a pointer to the VS_FIXEDFILEINFO structure for the version-information resource.

\VarFileInfo\Translation

The translation array in a Var variable information structure—the Value member of this structure. The function retrieves a pointer to this array of language and code page identifiers. An application can use these identifiers to access a language-specific StringTable structure (using the szKey member) in the version-information resource.

\StringFileInfo\lang-codepage\string-name

A value in a language-specific StringTable structure. The lang-codepage name is a concatenation of a language and code page identifier pair found as a DWORD in the translation array for the resource. Here the lang-codepage name must be specified as a hexadecimal string. The string-name name must be one of the predefined strings described in the following Remarks section. The function retrieves a string value specific to the language and code page indicated.

[out] lplpBuffer

Type: LPVOID*

When this method returns, contains the address of a pointer to the requested version information in the buffer pointed to by pBlock. The memory pointed to by lplpBuffer is freed when the associated pBlock memory is freed.

[out] puLen

Type: PUINT

When this method returns, contains a pointer to the size of the requested data pointed to by lplpBuffer: for version information values, the length in characters of the string stored at lplpBuffer; for translation array values, the size in bytes of the array stored at lplpBuffer; and for root block, the size in bytes of the structure.

Return value

Type: BOOL

If the specified version-information structure exists, and version information is available, the return value is nonzero. If the address of the length buffer is zero, no value is available for the specified version-information name.

If the specified name does not exist or the specified resource is not valid, the return value is zero.

Remarks

This function works on 16-, 32-, and 64-bit file images.

The following are predefined version information Unicode strings.

Comments	InternalName	ProductName
CompanyName	LegalCopyright	ProductVersion
FileDescription	LegalTrademarks	PrivateBuild
FileVersion	OriginalFilename	SpecialBuild

Examples

The following example shows how to enumerate the available version languages and retrieve the FileDescription string-value for each language.

Be sure to call the GetFileVersionInfoSize and GetFileVersionInfo functions before calling VerQueryValue to properly initialize the pBlock buffer.

// Structure used to store enumerated languages and code pages.

HRESULT hr;

struct LANGANDCODEPAGE {
  WORD wLanguage;
  WORD wCodePage;
} *lpTranslate;

// Read the list of languages and code pages.

VerQueryValue(pBlock, 
              TEXT("\\VarFileInfo\\Translation"),
              (LPVOID*)&lpTranslate,
              &cbTranslate);

// Read the file description for each language and code page.

for( i=0; i < (cbTranslate/sizeof(struct LANGANDCODEPAGE)); i++ )
{
  hr = StringCchPrintf(SubBlock, 50,
            TEXT("\\StringFileInfo\\%04x%04x\\FileDescription"),
            lpTranslate[i].wLanguage,
            lpTranslate[i].wCodePage);
	if (FAILED(hr))
	{
	// TODO: write error handler.
	}

  // Retrieve file description for language and code page "i". 
  VerQueryValue(pBlock, 
                SubBlock, 
                &lpBuffer, 
                &dwBytes); 
}

Note

The winver.h header defines VerQueryValue 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 [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winver.h (include Windows.h)
Library	Version.lib
DLL	Api-ms-win-core-version-l1-1-0.dll

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