g_win32_get_command_line ()

gchar **
g_win32_get_command_line (void);

Gets the command line arguments, on Windows, in the GLib filename encoding (ie: UTF-8).

Normally, on Windows, the command line arguments are passed to main() in the system codepage encoding. This prevents passing filenames as arguments if the filenames contain characters that fall outside of this codepage. If such filenames are passed, then substitutions will occur (such as replacing some characters with '?').

GLib's policy of using UTF-8 as a filename encoding on Windows was designed to localise the pain of dealing with filenames outside of the system codepage to one area: dealing with commandline arguments in main().

As such, most GLib programs should ignore the value of argv passed to their main() function and call g_win32_get_command_line() instead. This will get the "full Unicode" commandline arguments using GetCommandLineW() and convert it to the GLib filename encoding (which is UTF-8 on Windows).

The strings returned by this function are suitable for use with functions such as g_open() and g_file_new_for_commandline_arg() but are not suitable for use with g_option_context_parse(), which assumes that its input will be in the system codepage. The return value is suitable for use with g_option_context_parse_strv(), however, which is a better match anyway because it won't leak memory.

Unlike argv, the returned value is a normal strv and can (and should) be freed with g_strfreev() when no longer needed.

Since 2.40

g_win32_error_message ()

gchar *
g_win32_error_message (gint error);

Translate a Win32 error code (as returned by GetLastError() or WSAGetLastError()) into the corresponding message. The message is either language neutral, or in the thread's language, or the user's language, the system's language, or US English (see docs for FormatMessage()). The returned string is in UTF-8. It should be deallocated with g_free().

g_win32_getlocale ()

gchar *
g_win32_getlocale (void);

The setlocale() function in the Microsoft C library uses locale names of the form "English_United States.1252" etc. We want the UNIXish standard form "en_US", "zh_TW" etc. This function gets the current thread locale from Windows - without any encoding info - and returns it as a string of the above form for use in forming file names etc. The returned string should be deallocated with g_free().

g_win32_get_package_installation_directory ()

gchar *
g_win32_get_package_installation_directory
                               (const gchar *package,
                                const gchar *dll_name);

Try to determine the installation directory for a software package.

This function is deprecated. Use g_win32_get_package_installation_directory_of_module() instead.

The use of package is deprecated. You should always pass NULL. A warning is printed if non-NULL is passed as package .

The original intended use of package was for a short identifier of the package, typically the same identifier as used for GETTEXT_PACKAGE in software configured using GNU autotools. The function first looks in the Windows Registry for the value #InstallationDirectory in the key #HKLM\Software\@package, and if that value exists and is a string, returns that.

It is strongly recommended that packagers of GLib-using libraries for Windows do not store installation paths in the Registry to be used by this function as that interfers with having several parallel installations of the library. Enabling multiple installations of different versions of some GLib-using library, or GLib itself, is desirable for various reasons.

For this reason it is recommeded to always pass NULL as package to this function, to avoid the temptation to use the Registry. In version 2.20 of GLib the package parameter will be ignored and this function won't look in the Registry at all.

If package is NULL, or the above value isn't found in the Registry, but dll_name is non-NULL, it should name a DLL loaded into the current process. Typically that would be the name of the DLL calling this function, looking for its installation directory. The function then asks Windows what directory that DLL was loaded from. If that directory's last component is "bin" or "lib", the parent directory is returned, otherwise the directory itself. If that DLL isn't loaded, the function proceeds as if dll_name was NULL.

If both package and dll_name are NULL, the directory from where the main executable of the process was loaded is used instead in the same way as above.

g_win32_get_package_installation_directory_of_module ()

gchar *
g_win32_get_package_installation_directory_of_module
                               (gpointer hmodule);

This function tries to determine the installation directory of a software package based on the location of a DLL of the software package.

hmodule should be the handle of a loaded DLL or NULL. The function looks up the directory that DLL was loaded from. If hmodule is NULL, the directory the main executable of the current process is looked up. If that directory's last component is "bin" or "lib", its parent directory is returned, otherwise the directory itself.

It thus makes sense to pass only the handle to a "public" DLL of a software package to this function, as such DLLs typically are known to be installed in a "bin" or occasionally "lib" subfolder of the installation folder. DLLs that are of the dynamically loaded module or plugin variety are often located in more private locations deeper down in the tree, from which it is impossible for GLib to deduce the root of the package installation.

The typical use case for this function is to have a DllMain() that saves the handle for the DLL. Then when code in the DLL needs to construct names of files in the installation tree it calls this function passing the DLL handle.

Since 2.16

g_win32_get_package_installation_subdirectory ()

gchar *
g_win32_get_package_installation_subdirectory
                               (const gchar *package,
                                const gchar *dll_name,
                                const gchar *subdir);

This function is deprecated. Use g_win32_get_package_installation_directory_of_module() and g_build_filename() instead.

Returns a newly-allocated string containing the path of the subdirectory subdir in the return value from calling g_win32_get_package_installation_directory() with the package and dll_name parameters. See the documentation for g_win32_get_package_installation_directory() for more details. In particular, note that it is deprecated to pass anything except NULL as package .

g_win32_get_windows_version ()

guint
g_win32_get_windows_version (void);

Returns version information for the Windows operating system the code is running on. See MSDN documentation for the GetVersion() function. To summarize, the most significant bit is one on Win9x, and zero on NT-based systems. Since version 2.14, GLib works only on NT-based systems, so checking whether your are running on Win9x in your own software is moot. The least significant byte is 4 on Windows NT 4, and 5 on Windows XP. Software that needs really detailed version and feature information should use Win32 API like GetVersionEx() and VerifyVersionInfo().

Since 2.6

g_win32_locale_filename_from_utf8 ()

gchar *
g_win32_locale_filename_from_utf8 (const gchar *utf8filename);

Converts a filename from UTF-8 to the system codepage.

On NT-based Windows, on NTFS file systems, file names are in Unicode. It is quite possible that Unicode file names contain characters not representable in the system codepage. (For instance, Greek or Cyrillic characters on Western European or US Windows installations, or various less common CJK characters on CJK Windows installations.)

In such a case, and if the filename refers to an existing file, and the file system stores alternate short (8.3) names for directory entries, the short form of the filename is returned. Note that the "short" name might in fact be longer than the Unicode name if the Unicode name has very short pathname components containing non-ASCII characters. If no system codepage name for the file is possible, NULL is returned.

The return value is dynamically allocated and should be freed with g_free() when no longer needed.

Since 2.8

G_WIN32_DLLMAIN_FOR_DLL_NAME()

# define G_WIN32_DLLMAIN_FOR_DLL_NAME(static, dll_name)

On Windows, this macro defines a DllMain() function that stores the actual DLL name that the code being compiled will be included in.

On non-Windows platforms, expands to nothing.

G_WIN32_HAVE_WIDECHAR_API

#define G_WIN32_HAVE_WIDECHAR_API() TRUE

On Windows, this macro defines an expression which evaluates to TRUE if the code is running on a version of Windows where the wide character versions of the Win32 API functions, and the wide character versions of the C library functions work. (They are always present in the DLLs, but don't work on Windows 9x and Me.)

On non-Windows platforms, it is not defined.

Since 2.6

G_WIN32_IS_NT_BASED

#define G_WIN32_IS_NT_BASED() TRUE

On Windows, this macro defines an expression which evaluates to TRUE if the code is running on an NT-based Windows operating system.

On non-Windows platforms, it is not defined.

Since 2.6

MAXPATHLEN

#define MAXPATHLEN 1024

Provided for UNIX emulation on Windows; equivalent to UNIX macro MAXPATHLEN, which is the maximum length of a filename (including full path).