SelfDeleting application in VC++?

I want to delete a folder which contains the currently running application. How can i do it..? is there any way of doing it ? i.e the folder which contains the application should del开发者_运维知识库ete after the application has finished running ?

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Your best bet is probably to use the Win32 API MoveFileEx. It has a flag that can be set for deleting files when they are in use on the next reboot called MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT. Set the new filename parameter of MoveFileEx to NULL to perform this type of delete.

If dwFlags specifies MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT and lpNewFileName is NULL, MoveFileEx registers the lpExistingFileName file to be deleted when the system restarts.

Note: Normal files that are in use can be deleted normally using the Win32 API DeleteFile depending on if they were opened (Using the Win32 API CreateFile) with FILE_SHARE_DELETE permission. I don't think running programs by default on Windows have that permission though. When a file is specified to be deleted that is in use but that was opened with this flag, then the file will be removed when the last file handle is closed.

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This is hairy. I had to implement this once for a self-patching app, where the patcher had to (by client request) delete itself after installing the patch. You can do this by launching a helper DLL which deletes your process, along with itself.

The full method for deleting your process can be found here: http://www.handcraftedbytes.com/articles/writing-install-and-uninstall

As others have pointed out, you're not going to be able to delete the folder that your executable resides in while it exists there. My suggestion is to:

• Use MoveFileEx to move your executable off to a temporary directory,
• delete your application's directory,
• delete your executable using the self-deleting DLL method described in the link above.

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You cannot delete an executable file that is currently running, however you can delete a batch file that is currently running (cmd.exe loads the whole file into memory and then you can delete it).

So the simplest solution would be to launch a batch that tries to delete the .exe in a loop (because it may not work the first time - until your .exe has been unloaded) and then exit your process - with the batch file still running.