NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/comp/os/mswindo/programm/misc/1430

Text File | 1992-08-21 | 1.7 KB | 38 lines

Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.misc
Path: sparky!uunet!psgrain!ee.und.ac.za!ucthpx!casper.cs.uct.ac.za!jholdern
From: [e-mail] (J E Holderness)
Subject: How to spawn a DOS program in BC++?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Keywords: spawn
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of Cape Town
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 13:01:44 GMT
Lines: 27

I'm writing a program that needs to spawn a DOS program from within
Windows. My first problem was that I don't want it to be visible while it
is executing. The solution was to use a PIF file, but it is only know at
run-time what the program name is, so I have to make a temporary PIF file
at run-time and then execute that. Is there a better way of doing this?

My next problem was that once I had started the program running (I'm using
WinExec btw), control was returned to my application, leaving the DOS
program running in the background which is not what I want. My solution was
to store the number of tasks being executed before I did the WinExec, and
then wait until the number of tasks reached that value again. To stop
everything else coming to a halt while I was waiting, I kept executing the
Yield function. Once again, is there a better way of doing this?

My last problem, is that while I'm doing this, I want to change the mouse
cursor to the hourglass thingy. The only way I can get it to stay like
that (it changes to something else when it leaves my Window), is to keep
setting it in my waiting loop. Any other solutions?

Btw, I'm using Borland C++ 3.0.
I'm also very new to Windows and C++ programming, so please forgive if
these are stupid questions. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
James