Calling CreateProcess() the easy way

If you look up the CreateProcess() function in Win32 help, you'll notice that there are more than three dozen parameters that you can optionally setup before calling it. The good news is that you have to setup only a small number of those parameters to make a simple CreateProcess() call.

 

function CreateProcessSimple(sExecutableFilePath: string ): string;
var
  pi: TProcessInformation;
  si: TStartupInfo;
begin
  FillMemory(@si, sizeof(si), 0);
  si.cb := sizeof(si);

  CreateProcess(
    nil,
    PChar( sExecutableFilePath ),     // path to the executable file:
    nil, nil, False,
    NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, nil, nil,
    si, pi
  );

  // "after calling code" such as
  // the code to wait until the
  // process is done should go here  
  CloseHandle(pi.hProcess);
  CloseHandle(pi.hThread);
end;

Now, all you have to do is call CreateProcessSimple(), let's say to run Windows' Notepad:

CreateProcessSimple('notepad');