The Old New Thing

The history of passing a null pointer as the key name to Reg­Open­Key­Ex

Raymond Chen July 23, 2021 Jul 23, 2021 07/23/21

It doesn't mean anything special any more, but it once did.

The case of the strange NT-style path that was discovered by SearchPath

Raymond Chen July 22, 2021 Jul 22, 2021 07/22/21

Remember where it searches.

I know I can change the color of the DC pen, but what about the other attributes?

Raymond Chen July 21, 2021 Jul 21, 2021 07/21/21

They're locked in, sorry.

Why does the New menu even exist for creating new empty files?

Raymond Chen July 20, 2021 Jul 20, 2021 07/20/21

You have to open the file anyway to make it useful, so why not just open the program directly?

C++11 braced initialization made the impossible possible (and how to fix it so it stays impossible)

Raymond Chen July 19, 2021 Jul 19, 2021 07/19/21

Braced initialization to the rescue, or denied.

What’s the difference between throwing a winrt::hresult_error and using winrt::throw_hresult?

Raymond Chen July 16, 2021 Jul 16, 2021 07/16/21

It affects the error origination.

On proper handling of buffers in COM and RPC methods

Raymond Chen July 15, 2021 Jul 15, 2021 07/15/21

The RPC layer deals with most of the problems for you, assuming you're using the RPC layer.

How to perform more complicated search and replace-style renaming in a batch file

Raymond Chen July 14, 2021 Jul 14, 2021 07/14/21

Try something other than wildcards.

How did copying and renaming with wildcards work in MS-DOS?

Raymond Chen July 13, 2021 Jul 13, 2021 07/13/21

By lining up two parallel arrays.

Why do smart pointers null out the wrapped pointer before destroying it?

Raymond Chen July 12, 2021 Jul 12, 2021 07/12/21

It's not a race condition, but it's some condition.