Get PIDL

[Faraclas]

I am trying to use an ActiveX control that want a PIDL in addition to a path name (string). Does anyone know how to convert a pthname into a PIDL?

[Cyril]

Faraclas,

A CSIDL is used in conjunction with one of four shell functions, SHGetFolderLocation, SHGetFolderPath, SHGetSpecialFolderLocation, and SHGetSpecialFolderPath, to retrieve a special folder's pathname or item ID list (PIDL).
You can look at the documentation for the above shell functions at this link that allows to retrieve these informations (bottom of the page):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/Shell/reference/enums/csidl.asp

Regards,

Cyril Bouton
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[Faraclas]

This link tells how to get the special folder's PIDL. I am interested in getting the PIDL of any arbitrary file or folder on my computer.

[Cyril]

Faraclas,

While this ressource didn't seem to help, I would strongly recommend to browse the Microsoft msdn site about this topic since they developped this technology:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_adv/pidl_ovw.asp?frame=true#pidl_walk

Cyril