Get exe from shortcut no api or vbscript

[BenJones]

Hi this is a small bit of code I made to get the exe path and file from a shortcut, it may need tidying up a bit but I try it on a few shortcuts and seems to work
anyway comments and suggestions welcome.

Imports System.IO
Imports System.Text
 
Public Class Form1
 
    Public Function GetShortCutLink(ByVal Source As String) As String
        Dim br As BinaryReader
        Dim Bytes(2048) As Byte
        Dim sb As New StringBuilder()
 
        If Not File.Exists(Source) Then
            Throw New FileNotFoundException
        End If
 
        'Open shortcut file for reading.
        br = New BinaryReader(File.OpenRead(Source), Encoding.ASCII)
        'Read 2048 bytes into bytes array.
        Bytes = br.ReadBytes(Bytes.Length)
        br.Close()
 
        For Counter As Integer = 100 To Bytes.Length - 1
            'Check for :\ and
            If Bytes(Counter) = 58 And Bytes(Counter + 1) = 92 And Bytes(Counter - 2) <> 47 Then
                Counter = (Counter - 1)
                Do Until Bytes(Counter) = 0
                    'Build string.
                    sb.Append(Chr(Bytes(Counter)))
                    'INC Counter
                    Counter += 1
                Loop
                Exit For
            End If
        Next Counter
        'Return shortcut link.
        Return sb.ToString()
 
    End Function
 
    Private Sub cmdGetLink_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles cmdGetLink.Click
        Try
            'Try and get link.
            Dim sLink As String = GetShortCutLink("C:\out\data\Easy GIF Animator Pro 5.2.lnk")
 
            MessageBox.Show(sLink, "Link",
                MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)
        Catch ex As Exception
            MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Error",
                            MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Information)
        End Try
    End Sub
End Class

[chris128]

Nice do you understand the rest of the stuff in a .lnk file then or is that the only bit you know how to parse at the moment? I'm just wondering if you'd be able to use this knowledge to write a .NET method that would create your own shortcut files, as that seems to be a real pain to do from managed code at the moment (there's some native shell APIs that will do it but they're not particularly straight forward).

[BenJones]

No that all I know I only really wanted something to read the exe from the shortcut, To create shortcuts I use the VBScript object. Though I am sure you can make a raw shortcut creator in VB with out API or VBScript, just need to get your hands on the file format.

[chris128]

Yeah exactly, but I've never come across anywhere that actually explains the LNK file format

[chris128]

Actually, just found this http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(prot.20).aspx which leads you to this detailed document: http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...S-SHLLINK].pdf