| Waiting for an application
to finish executing
This code is extremely useful when you need to let a program complete doing whatever it does before your program can continue. An example is when you let WinZip create a ZIP file for you but you cannot continue until the ZIP has been created. |
function WinExecAndWait32(Path:
PChar; Visibility: Word): integer;
var Msg: TMsg;
{
Delphi 3: lpExitCode: integer; }
{ Delphi 4 information courtesy of Joel Milne }
{ Delphi 4: } lpExitCode: cardinal;
StartupInfo:
TStartupInfo;
ProcessInfo:
TProcessInformation;
begin
FillChar(StartupInfo,
SizeOf(TStartupInfo), 0);
with StartupInfo
do
begin
cb
:= SizeOf(TStartupInfo);
dwFlags
:= STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW or STARTF_FORCEONFEEDBACK;
wShowWindow
:= visibility; {you could pass sw_show or sw_hide
as parameter}
end;
if CreateProcess(nil,
path, nil, nil, False, NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, nil, nil, StartupInfo,
ProcessInfo) then
begin
repeat
while PeekMessage(Msg, 0, 0, 0, pm_Remove) do
begin
if Msg.Message = wm_Quit then Halt(Msg.WParam);
TranslateMessage(Msg);
DispatchMessage(Msg);
end;
GetExitCodeProcess(ProcessInfo.hProcess,lpExitCode);
until
lpExitCode <> Still_Active;
with
ProcessInfo do {not sure this is necessary
but seen in in some code elsewhere}
begin
CloseHandle(hThread);
CloseHandle(hProcess);
end;
Result
:= 0; {success}
end else
Result := GetLastError;
end;