- Windows Processes and Threads
- Process Creation
- Process Handle Counts
- Process Identities
- Duplicating Handles
- Exiting and Terminating a Process
- Waiting for a Process to Terminate
- Environment Blocks and Strings
- Example: Parallel Pattern Searching
- Processes in a Multiprocessor Environment
- Process Execution Times
- Example: Process Execution Times
- Generating Console Control Events
- Example: Simple Job Management
- Job Objects
- Summary
- Exercises
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Environment Blocks and Strings
Figure 6-1 includes the process environment block. The environment block contains a sequence of strings of the form
){kind=link}
Name = Value
Each environment string, being a string, is NULL-terminated, and the entire block of strings is itself NULL-terminated. PATH is one example of a commonly used environment variable.
To pass the parent's environment to a child process, set lpEnvironment to NULL in the CreateProcess call. Any process, in turn, can interrogate or modify its environment variables or add new environment variables to the block.
The two functions used to get and set variables are as follows:
DWORD GetEnvironmentVariable ( LPCTSTR lpName, LPTSTR lpValue, DWORD cchValue) BOOL SetEnvironmentVariable ( LPCTSTR lpName, LPCTSTR lpValue)
lpName is the variable name. On setting a value, the variable is added to the block if it does not exist and if the value is not NULL. If, on the other hand, the value is NULL, the variable is removed from the block. The "=" character cannot appear in a value string.
GetEnvironmentVariable returns the length of the value string, or 0 on failure. If the lpValue buffer is not long enough, as indicated by cchValue, then the return value is the number of characters actually required to hold the complete string. Recall that GetCurrentDirectory (Chapter 2) uses a similar mechanism.
Process Security
Normally, CreateProcess gives PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS rights. There are, however, several specific rights, including PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION, CREATE_PROCESS, PROCESS_TERMINATE, PROCESS_SET_INFORMATION, DUPLICATE_HANDLE, and CREATE_THREAD. In particular, it can be useful to limit PROCESS_TERMINATE rights to the parent process given the frequently mentioned dangers of terminating a running process. Chapter 15 describes security attributes for processes and other objects.
UNIX waits for process termination using wait and waitpid, but there are no time-outs even though waitpid can poll (there is a nonblocking option). These functions wait only for child processes, and there is no equivalent to the multiple wait on a collection of processes, although it is possible to wait for all processes in a process group. One slight difference is that the exit code is returned with wait and waitpid, so there is no need for a separate function equivalent to GetExitCodeProcess.
UNIX also supports environment strings similar to those in Windows. getenv (in the C library) has the same functionality as GetEnvironmentVariable except that the programmer must be sure to have a sufficiently large buffer. putenv, setenv, and unsetenv (not in the C library) are different ways to add, change, and remove variables and their values, with functionality equivalent to SetEnvironmentVariable.