Issue
Is there a way in C/C++ to find the location (full path) of the current executed program?
(The problem with argv[0]
is that it does not give the full path.)
Solution
To summarize:
On Unixes with
/proc
really straight and realiable way is to:readlink("/proc/self/exe", buf, bufsize)
(Linux)readlink("/proc/curproc/file", buf, bufsize)
(FreeBSD)readlink("/proc/self/path/a.out", buf, bufsize)
(Solaris)
On Unixes without
/proc
(i.e. if above fails):If argv[0] starts with "/" (absolute path) this is the path.
Otherwise if argv[0] contains "/" (relative path) append it to cwd (assuming it hasn't been changed yet).
Otherwise search directories in
$PATH
for executableargv[0]
.
Afterwards it may be reasonable to check whether the executable isn't actually a symlink. If it is resolve it relative to the symlink directory.
This step is not necessary in /proc method (at least for Linux). There the proc symlink points directly to executable.
Note that it is up to the calling process to set
argv[0]
correctly. It is right most of the times however there are occasions when the calling process cannot be trusted (ex. setuid executable).On Windows: use
GetModuleFileName(NULL, buf, bufsize)
Answered By - lispmachine Answer Checked By - Terry (WPSolving Volunteer)