First-up, I'm running ActiveState perl v5.8.9 under Windows XP SP3 (32-bit) on a fairly reasonable Inter Core2 Duo PC @ 3GHz and with 4GB RAM...

I have an application where a number of instances of an .exe run and they each have different title text on their windows.

I'm trying to work a way that I can capture the window title for each of the instances and if one of the items is missing, I can do something to restart it, viz: 

list of jobs = (123, 456, 789)
for each running job process
  if process window title matches one of job list
    note job number is running
    go to next process
  endif
endfor

for each required job
  if not flagged as running
    create the job
  endif
endfor

[download]

Now, I can use something like Win32::Process::Info to get some basic info... but not the window title (although, that module seems to be rather unreliable anyway). If I use Win32::API, I can get into GetConsoleTitle() in kernel32.dll and retrieve the window title for my own cmd.exe process... but how do I get the window title for another process?

I can do things a very klunky way and shell out a 'tasklist' command and then parse the results, viz: 

c:\>cmd.exe /c "tasklist /v"

Image Name     PID Session Name ...   CPU Time Window Title                                                            
=========== ====== ============ ... ========== ==============...
Socks.exe    10968 Console             0:00:01 2442 - Socks                                                            
Socks.exe     1240 Console             0:00:00 2745 - Socks                                                            
Socks.exe    20720 Console             0:00:01 4085 - Socks                                                            
Socks.exe     6188 Console             0:00:00 2423 - Socks

...but I would think there'd have to be a 'native perl' -way to do it?

I've scoured through CPAN and had a look through the Monks' site but have had no joy.

I would appreciate any thoughts on a 'more elegant' means to approach the problem.

Thanks.

In reply to How to Retrieve another Process' Window Title? by ozboomer

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