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ShelExec Logo ShelExec v1.27 An application + source code to call the ShellExecute API

Welcome to ShelExec, A very simple utility to allow you to call the ShellExecute API from the command line.

Places where you might find ShelExec useful are in adding an autorun.inf file to your CD / DVD +/- RW discs. For example suppose you have a HTML page called index.htm on the root of your CD which you would like to run automatically whenever the user inserts the CD. All you need to do is put ShelExec.exe, some ico file (this is optional as is the icon=... in the autorun.inf file) and the index.htm files into the root directory and create a autorun.inf file with the following contents:

[autorun]
open=ShelExec.exe @EXEDRV@\index.html
icon=youricon.ico

Note that it is important to use the @EXEDRV@ or @EXEDIR@ replacement parameters as this helps ensures that ShelExec uses a fully quoted path when it runs your program. Otherwise you can get some problems on various versions of Windows with your AutoRun CD's.

Items that ShelExec can handle include any file which is registered with the shell e.g. Word .Doc files, Text Files, batch files etc etc. It can also handle URLS such as "http://www.naughter.com", "ftp://ftp.microsoft.com " and "mailto:pjna@naughter.com"

The more technically minded of you may say why is there a need to have this program since you can use "start filename" on autorun CD's without any apparent problems. The problem with this approach is that it does not work on NT kernel because on these operating systems "start" is implemented as an "Internal" command in cmd.exe (as opposed to a standard exe on Windows 9x) with the upshot that your CD's will not AutoRun on these operating systems. Using ShelExec will mean that your CD's will autorun on all OS's which support it.

 

The enclosed zip file contains the ShelExec source code and a number of prebuilt binaries of ShelExec.

 

Copyright

 

Updates

v1.27 (26 May 2022)

v1.26 (5 April 2020)

v1.25 (23 December 2019)

v1.24 (1 June 2019)

v1.23 (2 October 2018)

v1.22 (27 December 2017)

v1.21 (23 October 2016)

v1.20 (31 July 2016)

v1.19 (25 July 2015)

16 April 2013

v1.18 (14 April 2013)

v1.17 (12 January 2008)

v1.16 (21 December 2006)

v1.15 (23 September 2005)

3 July 2004

v1.14 (24 January 2003)

v1.13 (18 October 2002)

v1.12 (17 October 2002)

29 July 2002

v1.11 (1 October 2001)

v1.1 (10 February 2001)

10 November 2000

v1.02 (9 April 2000)

v1.01 (16 July 1999)