mdog has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Brethern --

I've done some searching on the Net and haven't figure out to do the following:

Take a windows shortcut (let say on the desktop) and change it's icon using perl (without using Win32::GuiTest).

I want the icon to change without having perl needing to take control of the mouse / keyboard (Win32::GuiTest).

So is there anyway to do this behind the scenes?

Thanks,
mdog

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Changing Windows Shortcut Icons
by Albannach (Monsignor) on Jul 08, 2004 at 21:46 UTC
    Have a look at Win32::Shortcut (part of libwin32) which you probably already have if you installed ActiveState. Something like: 
    my $shortcut = Win32::Shortcut->new($file);
$shortcut->{IconLocation} = 'C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe';
$shortcut->{IconNumber}   = 0;
$shortcut->Save($file);

    [download]
    should do the trick. Now if you can tell me how to determine which files in a given list are in fact shortcuts (apart from testing the ShortcutPath using Win32::Shortcut) then I'd be interested to hear it!

    --
    I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

[reply]
[d/l]

      Now if you can tell me how to determine which files in a given list are in fact shortcuts (apart from testing the ShortcutPath using Win32::Shortcut) then I'd be interested to hear it!

      I could be missing something, but can't you tell simply from the '.lnk' extension?

      bbfu
      Black flowers blossom
      Fearless on my breath

[reply]
        Thanks! It appears (through some experiments on several different versions of Windows - sorry for the delay) that having the extension 'lnk' is sufficient proof that a file is indeed a shortcut file. I had thought of that but assumed (foolishly it seems) that one could re-name a shortcut without destroying the shortcutting capability. It seems that this is not the case - you can't rename a shortcut to eliminate the '.lnk' (short of editing the directory I imagine).

        However: if you rename any file to add '.lnk', the file seems to be permanently changed (since you can't remove the '.lnk') to a shortcut, though it's content is retained and can still be manipulated. In this case, the shortcut properties are inaccessible which makes me think that it isn't really a shortcut after all. Now, if you use Win32::Shortcut's Save() on such a file that isn't really a shortcut, its contents are then destroyed and replaced with the guts of a standard .lnk file and it becomes a real shortcut. Just to be weirder, I tried Save() on a normal file without '.lnk', and it too had it's content replaced, but the Explorer didn't recognise it as a shortcut as the extension was not 'lnk'. I think I'll stop now! It would be better if it were simply impossible to add '.lnk' to an existing normal file.

        --
        I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Many, many thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for...I should have checked CPAN but I didn't think there would be anything specific for windows and shortcuts. Goes to show how much I know.
[reply]
Re: Changing Windows Shortcut Icons
by EdwardG (Vicar) on Jul 08, 2004 at 21:32 UTC

    You could get to the icon via Windows Script Host, like this script does.

     

[reply]

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