Re: Finding out executable location from a c program

FROM : Alastair Houghton
DATE : Tue Nov 20 13:36:53 2007

On 19 Nov 2007, at 16:51, Christiaan Hofman wrote:

> I also wouldn't know. There should be a way though, as internally 
> NSBundle does.


You can use _NSGetExecutablePath() from <mach-o/dyld.h>.  According to 
the header, it might return the path to a symlink, so you may want to 
use realpath() as well, and you could potentially create a security 
hole if you use this the wrong way.

(I should add that this function is "officially sanctioned" in as much 
as it's used in MoreIsBetter: <http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/MoreIsBetter/listing208.html
>; it used to be documented in the NSModule man page, but it looks 
like that no longer exists.)

It's perhaps worth saying though that using the path of your tool is 
generally an evil thing to do.  It's normally best, for command line 
tools, to hard-code paths to any resources they need in the normal 
UNIX places, or to stick them inside an associated application and use 
Launch Services to locate that (you probably want 
LSFindApplicationForInfo()), then use CF or NSBundle to grab 
references to the relevant files from there.

Kind regards,

Alastair.

--
http://alastairs-place.net