SHELL, synchronous or not?

[Egbert Zijlema]

This is what I find in PBDLL60 Help:
"The Shell statement runs other programs synchronously. That means that execution of your code is
suspended until the shelled program finishes."

And this is what really happens:
If my application does not find a correct Language Identifier, it shells to the Control Panel
application "Regional Settings", in order to let the user change these 'wrong' setting. Before the
OK-button of that dialog has been clicked, my application is going on already.
So, either the information in PB's help file is not correct or Control Panel is an exception on the
rule. Anyhow, is there a way to work around this problem? I myself was thinking of changing the
settings on the fly, but as far as I understand Microsoft help (win32.hlp) this is not possible.

And, talking about this issue, what shall I use to detect the identifier:
%LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT or %LOCAL_USER_DEFAULT?


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[Gregery D Engle]

How are you executing the "Regional Settings" CPL?

Are you shelling to this:

"control.exe c:\winnt\System32\main.cpl" because even if you
shell synchronously with that previous command it will return
immediatly because control.exe exits immediatly.

Hope that helps.

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-Greg

[Egbert Zijlema]

Gregery,

This is the code involved (slightly modified for the test)

#COMPILE EXE
#INCLUDE "WIN32API.INC"

FUNCTION PBMain() AS LONG
  LOCAL szLangID AS ASCIIZ * 64
  GetLocaleInfo %LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT, %LOCALE_ILANGUAGE, szLangID, SIZEOF(szLangID)
  IF szLangID <> "0413" THEN             ' if not Dutch(Standard)
    GetLocaleInfo %LOCALE_SYSTEM_DEFAULT, %LOCALE_SLANGUAGE, szLangID, SIZEOF(szLangID)
    answer& = MSGBOX("The language settings are not correct: " + UCASE$(szLangID) + _
                     REPEAT$(2, $CRLF) + _
                     "Click OK to modify, Cancel to stop and call your" + $CRLF + _
                     "system administrator for help.", _
                     %MB_OKCANCEL OR %MB_ICONQUESTION, "Incorrect language")
    IF answer& = %IDCANCEL THEN
      EXIT FUNCTION                    ' quit
    ELSE
      SHELL "control intl.cpl"         ' run Regional settings
    END IF
  END IF
  MSGBOX "You have started Control Panel, but nevertheless this message shows up", 64, _
         "Application continues"
END FUNCTION

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[Eric Pearson]

Egbert --

Greg nailed it. SHELL is working properly, the problems is that the CONTROL program is not synchronous. SHELL is launching CONTROL and waiting for it to return. CONTROL is launching the control panel applet and then returning immediately, before the applet exits. So when CONTROL exits SHELL allows your program to continue running.

-- Eric


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[This message has been edited by Eric Pearson (edited February 22, 2001).]

[Edwin Knoppert]

Control.exe is a 16 bit app for backward... reasons.
Iow's don't use it..

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[Semen Matusovski]

Classic way for Win95+ is
Shell "rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL intl.cpl,Regional Settings"

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[Egbert Zijlema]

Thank you, Semen!
Did'nt know this. Tested it and let the CP applet alone during a cup of coffee. It still was there.
In other words: problem solved.


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