How to get process description?

Question

I want to get the description of a process (the description that is seen in task manager) in Windows using C++.

Answer 1

Although I read this question, the accepted answer, and the documentation for VerQueryValue, I spent quite a while to understand how to use that VerQueryValue function (since the code example in the docs has no declarations of variables and isn't clear for me at all).

So I decided to put here the code that can be easily run as a working example of the usage of VerQueryValue to get a process description.

#pragma comment(lib,"Version.lib")

#include 
#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

int printFileDescriptions(const wchar_t* filename)
{
    int versionInfoSize = GetFileVersionInfoSize(filename, NULL);
    if (!versionInfoSize) {
        return 0;
    }

    auto versionInfo = new BYTE[versionInfoSize];
    std::unique_ptr versionInfo_automatic_cleanup(versionInfo);
    if (!GetFileVersionInfo(filename, NULL, versionInfoSize, versionInfo)) {
        return 0;
    }

    struct LANGANDCODEPAGE {
        WORD wLanguage;
        WORD wCodePage;
    } *translationArray;

    UINT translationArrayByteLength = 0;
    if (!VerQueryValue(versionInfo, L"\\VarFileInfo\\Translation", (LPVOID*)&translationArray, &translationArrayByteLength)) {
        return 0;
    }

    // You may check GetSystemDefaultUILanguage() == translationArray[i].wLanguage 
    // if only the system language required
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < (translationArrayByteLength / sizeof(LANGANDCODEPAGE)); i++) {
        wchar_t fileDescriptionKey[256]; 
        wsprintf(
            fileDescriptionKey,
            L"\\StringFileInfo\\%04x%04x\\FileDescription",
            translationArray[i].wLanguage,
            translationArray[i].wCodePage
        );

        wchar_t* fileDescription = NULL;
        UINT fileDescriptionSize;
        if (VerQueryValue(versionInfo, fileDescriptionKey, (LPVOID*)&fileDescription, &fileDescriptionSize)) {
            wcout << endl << fileDescription << endl;
        }
    }

    return TRUE;
}

int main()
{
    // Set locale of the console to print non-ASCII symbols
    SetConsoleOutputCP(GetACP());
    SetConsoleCP(GetACP());
    wcout.imbue(std::locale("")); // set default global locale
    // ----------------------------------------------------

    auto path = L"C:\\Windows\\explorer.exe";
    printFileDescriptions(path);

    wcin.get(); // to prevent console close
}

It's supposed that all WinAPI functions on your system use wchar_t, that is VerQueryValueW is actually used.

The initial version of the code I took here Retrieve File Description an Application VerQueryValue