How to Launch and Manage Windows Executables with ::CreateProcess in C ?

Calling ::CreateProcess to Launch and Manage Windows Executables in C

This article will demonstrate how to utilize the ::CreateProcess function in C to launch Windows executables, wait for their completion, and correctly handle their termination.

Launching an Executable

The ::CreateProcess function accepts several parameters, including the executable path and command line arguments. To launch an EXE, specify the path to the executable in the path parameter:

<code class="cpp">STARTUPINFO info = { sizeof(info) };
PROCESS_INFORMATION processInfo;

if (CreateProcess("C:\path\to\my.exe", NULL, NULL, NULL, TRUE, 0, NULL, NULL, &info, &processInfo)) {
  // Executable successfully launched
} else {
  // Handle launch failure
}</code>

Waiting for Completion

To wait for the executable to finish, call the WaitForSingleObject function with processInfo.hProcess as the handle to wait for:

<code class="cpp">WaitForSingleObject(processInfo.hProcess, INFINITE);</code>

This will block the current thread until the process exits.

Handling Process Termination

After the executable has finished, close the process and thread handles to properly release system resources:

<code class="cpp">CloseHandle(processInfo.hProcess);
CloseHandle(processInfo.hThread);</code>

Sample Code

Putting it all together, the following code demonstrates how to launch an EXE, wait for its completion, and handle process termination:

<code class="cpp">STARTUPINFO info = { sizeof(info) };
PROCESS_INFORMATION processInfo;

if (CreateProcess("C:\path\to\my.exe", NULL, NULL, NULL, TRUE, 0, NULL, NULL, &info, &processInfo)) {
  WaitForSingleObject(processInfo.hProcess, INFINITE);
  CloseHandle(processInfo.hProcess);
  CloseHandle(processInfo.hThread);
}</code>

This code will launch the specified EXE, wait for it to finish, and then properly close all handles, ensuring proper cleanup and resource deallocation.

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