Can a Win32 console application detect if it has been run from the explorer or not?

Question

I have to create a console application which needs certain parameters. If they are missing or wrong I print out an error message.

Now the problem: If someone starts the program from the explorer by double-clicking the console window disappears immediately. (But the application is not entirely useless from the explorer, you could drag files onto it and it would work)

I could always wait for a keypress, but I don't want that if the user did start it from the command line.

Is there some way to distinguish between these situations?

Answer 1

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/99115, "INFO: Preventing the Console Window from Disappearing".

The idea is to use GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo to determine that the cursor has not moved from the initial 0,0 position.

Code sample from @tomlogic, based on the referenced Knowledge Base article:

// call in main() before printing to stdout // returns TRUE if program is in its own console (cursor at 0,0) or // FALSE if it was launched from an existing console. // See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/99115 #include <stdio.h> #include <windows.h> int separate_console( void) {     CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;      if (!GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo( GetStdHandle( STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), &csbi))     {         printf( "GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo failed: %lu\n", GetLastError());         return FALSE;     }      // if cursor position is (0,0) then we were launched in a separate console     return ((!csbi.dwCursorPosition.X) && (!csbi.dwCursorPosition.Y)); } 

Answer 2

GetConsoleTitle()

I've seen code which performs

if (!GetConsoleTitle(NULL, 0) && GetLastError() == ERROR_SUCCESS) {     // Console } else {     // GUI } 

BUT... I've found that AttachConsole() is more helpful

In C++ (off the top of my head, and I'm no C++ programmer)

if (!AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS)) {     // GUI } else {     // Console, and you have a handle to the console that already exists. } 

Is more effective. Additionally, if you find yourself in a GUI environment and would like to stay there as long as you can, but later find something catastrophic has happened that could really use a dump to a console window (you can't be arsed writing an edit box window to lot it to or attach to the NT System log and throw up a MessageBox()) well then you can AllocConsole() later on in the process, when GUI methods have failed.