searchpath

Searches the DOS path for a file.

Defined in header <dir.h>

Syntax

#include <dir.h>
char *searchpathCconst char *file);

Portability

Remarks

searchpath attempts to locate file, searching along the DOS path, which is the PATH=... string in the environment. A pointer to the complete path-name string is returned as the function value.

searchpath searches for the file in the current directory of the current drive first. If the file is not found there, the PATH environment variable is fetched, and each directory in the path is searched in turn until the file is found, or the path is exhausted.

When the file is located, a string is returned containing the full path name. This string can be used in a call to access the file (for example, with fopen or exec...).

The string returned is located in a static buffer and is overwritten on each subsequent call to searchpath.

Return value

searchpath returns a pointer to a file name string if the file is successfully located; otherwise, searchpath returns null.

See also

• exec
• findfirst
• findnext
• spawn
• system

Example

#include <stdio.h>
#include <dir.h>

int main(void)
{
   char *p;
   /* looks for TLINK and  returns a pointer to the path */
   p = searchpath ("TLINK.EXE"),•
   printf ("Search for TLINK.EXE : %s\n", p);
   /* looks for non-existent  file */
   p = searchpath ("NOTEXIST.FIL"),•
   printf("Search for NOTEXIST.FIL  : %s\n", p);
   return 0;

Program   output

Search for TLINK.EXE  : C:\BIN\TLINK.EXE
Search for NOTEXIST.FIL  : (IWLL)

Differences from modern implementations

Nothing recorded yet.

Modern references

• Microsoft C runtime (search)

These are search links, not yet checked by hand.

Stable link: /3.1/dir.h/searchpath/ · short form /3.1/searchpath/