Hi everyone,

related to Antonio Sanchez Zaplana's enquiry: I'd like to launch another .exe (or .bat) from
inside a Delphi application using Delphi 4 running under Windows 95 (or Windows NT4).

My problem is that I don't appear to have access to help pages for any of the suggestions I've
found so I can't get the appropriate syntax right: CreateProcess, WinExec or ShellExec. Does
anyone know where I could find documentation for the Windows API calls that can be used in
Delphi? Would anyone be kind enough to mail me an example piece of code to accomplish this
in Delphi 4?

A related problem: I guess from what I have seen that the Windows API calls take strings as
PChars, for instance the suggestion in the Delphi Developer's Guide (page 486) for launching
another application hinges on converting parameters from strings to PChars. Is this right, and if
so, has anyone out there found a way of doing this? Every way I try this I get errors such as  
"Path[0] inaccessible, use Length or SetLength" or "incompatible types".

And am I missing something, or aren't the Delphi 4 help pages themselves quite annoying: has
anyone managed to find a list of ASCII codes in there, for instance, which I'd have said was a
pretty basic and obvious requirement?

Thank you for any help,
Jon

P.S. I'm a newbie, please be gentle...

this is the function, is uses ShellAPI:

function ExecuteFile(const FileName, Params, DefaultDir: string; howCmd:
Integer): THandle;
var
  zFileName, zParams, zDir: array[0..256] of Char;
begin
  Result:=ShellExecute(Application.MainForm.Handle, nil, StrPCopy(zFileName,
FileName), StrPCopy(zParams, Params), StrPCopy(zDir, DefaultDir), ShowCmd);
end;

and this is how you can call it:

ExecuteFile('<filename.exe>','','',SW_SHOW);

Alex

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the suggestions I've
Is this right, and if

Jon,

You have the help files - you're like my partner, though: you don't
read README files... <g>

Win32.HLP is located in Program Files\Common Files\Borland Shared\
MSHelp.

You can also use ExecuteFile(), contained in FMXUtils.pas (located
in Delphi4\Demos\Doc\FileManEx) to run an external process.

With Delphi 32 bit, this is a piece of cake - there really isn't
any conversion:

var
   sStr: String;
begin
   sStr := 'This is a value for an API call';
   UseApiFunction(PChar(sStr));
end;

That's it... A simple typecast.

The problem is that, in Delphi 1 and earlier versions of Pascal,
strings were restricted to 255 characters, and String[0] was
a place to store the length of the string. This isn't true in
32-bit versions of Delphi, where String is the same (by default)
as AnsiString and has virtually no limit (OK, 2GB). The AnsiString
type is 1-based, so the beginning of the string starts at Str[1] -
that's why you got the above error message.

ASCII codes aren't really appropriate under Windows, as it doesn't
normally use ASCII (OEM) character sets; it uses the ANSI character
set instead.

I'm sorry - I may be dense, but I'm not sure why this is a 'basic
and obvious requirement'... It may have been in the DOS world, so
you had line drawing and non-US character support... But I've been
developing for Windows for about 5 years now, and haven't needed
an ASCII chart yet...

If you really have a need for one, you can use the Character Map
application that comes with Windows (you may need to install it
from your Windows 95 CD, under the Accessories category).

I hope I met this request... :-)

Ken
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Ken White

Clipper Functions for Delphi
http://members.aol.com/clipfunc