Safe file name comparison

o How does one determine which of the two names is the short one and which is the long ?
o There is no API-function that will convert a long file name into a short one. There are (of course) some descriptions of how one can do this, but that's it.

Fortunataly there is another solution. The Win95/NT shell deals with PIDLs (pointers to item identifier lists) instead. Every file in the filesystem has one unique PIDL, so the idea of comparing to file names is to compare their PIDLs.
The bad point is, that this requires some knowledge of the (sucking) COM interface mechanism...

Here is the way it does:

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <shlobj.h>

// this function compares the PIDLs of two file names.
// NOTE that you cannot compare the names directly (strcmp() for
// instance), because one of the names might appear in
// long file name format and the other in short file name
// format.
// The function returns TRUE, if <pszPath1> and <pszPath2>
// name the same file in the filesystem, otherwise FALSE.
//
// <pszPath1> and <pszPath2> shall be absolute pathnames ...
BOOL CompareFilenames( LPCSTR pszPath1, LPCSTR pszPath2 ) {
	VERIFY(pszPath1 != 0);
	VERIFY(pszPath2 != 0);

	CoInitialize(0) ;

	BOOL bRet = FALSE;

	LPSHELLFOLDER pDesktopFolder;

	if( SUCCEEDED( SHGetDesktopFolder(&pDesktopFolder)) ) {
		// COM-interface always needs unicode strings ...
		OLECHAR	olePath1[MAX_PATH], olePath2[MAX_PATH];
		MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, MB_PRECOMPOSED, pszPath1, -1, olePath1, MAX_PATH);
		MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, MB_PRECOMPOSED, pszPath2, -1, olePath2, MAX_PATH);

		// retrieve PIDLs
		LPITEMIDLIST pidl1, pidl2;
		DWORD dwAttr;
		DWORD dummy;
		if( SUCCEEDED(pDesktopFolder->ParseDisplayName(0, 0, olePath1, &dummy, &pidl1, &dwAttr)) &&
			SUCCEEDED(pDesktopFolder->ParseDisplayName(0, 0, olePath2, &dummy, &pidl2, &dwAttr)) ) {

			// now we can compare the PIDLs
			HRESULT hRes = pDesktopFolder->CompareIDs(0, pidl1, pidl2);
			if( HRESULT_CODE(hRes) == 0 )
				bRet = TRUE;

			// free the PIDLs (do not forget this !) ...
			LPMALLOC pMalloc;
			SHGetMalloc(&pMalloc);
			pMalloc->Free((void *)pidl1);
			pMalloc->Free((void *)pidl2);
			pMalloc->Release();
		}
		pDesktopFolder->Release();
	}

	CoUninitialize();

	return bRet;
}