C++

Redefinition of ‘BOOKMARK’

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If you include in a VC++ project <mapidefs.h> and <sqltypes.h> and build for the x64 platform you get a redefinition error. #include <Windows.h> #include <MAPIDefS.h> #include <sqltypes.h> int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { return 0; } 1>C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\include\sqltypes.h(283) : error C2371: ‘BOOKMARK’ : redefinition; different basic types 1> C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\include\MAPIDefS.h(1142) : see declaration … Read more

C++ Renaissance at Microsoft

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At the beginning of this year, Microsoft announced a “C++ renaissance”. Quoting from the description of a Channel 9 video with Craig Symonds and Mohsen Agsen: C++ is currently undergoing a renaissance. This means that, by definition, the language, compilers and compositional tooling are evolving and coalescing into a state that maximizes native developer efficiency, … Read more

Finding Installed Applications with VC++

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Finding applications installed on a machine (the ones that you see in Control Panel Add/Remove programs) could be a little bit tricky, because there isn’t a bulletproof API or method. Each of the available methods has its own weak points. WMI is slow and can actually be disabled on a machine. MSI API only shows … Read more

MVP Global Summit 2011

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The MVP Global Summit 2011 took place in Redmond and Bellevue at the beginning of March. This year I attended for the fifth time, and as usual it was a great time. Fellow MVPs, discussions with the Microsoft product groups, parties, everything made it worth it. And this year it was also a little bit … Read more

Parallel Programming for C++ Developers

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Channel9 recently posted a video with the Parallel Computing Concurrency Runtime team talking, mainly, about tasks and continuations, new features to the Parallel Patterns Library. These are already available through the ConcRT Extra’s Sample Pack. You can watch the half hour interview with the team here. Besides the new stuff they shown, I particularly liked … Read more

Finding If a Computer Is a Laptop

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I’ve ran recently across this question: how to find (using C++) if a computer is a laptop? That is possible with WMI and many answers (such as this) point to the Win32_SystemEnclosure class. This class has a member called ChassisTypes, which is an array of integers indicating possible chassis types. At least one of them … Read more