Registry keys

[CornedBee]

If I copy a HKEY using RegOpenValueEx:
HKEY orig, copy;
RegOpenValueEx(orig, 0, 0, 0, &copy);
I get a different value in copy than orig. Is there any way I can still test if the refer to the same key?

[Marc G]

HKEY's are handles to a registry key. Each handle is different, but different handles can point to the same registry key.

[CornedBee]

I know that. I want to find out if two distinct HKEYs point to the same key.

[Marc G]

Ah, sorry, didn't know you already knew ;)

Perhaps you can use RegQueryInfoKey to query info of both HKEY's and see if they are the same.

[wey97]

You can only open a key or query a value. RegOpenValueEx doesn't exist in the Windows API.

I think maybe you mean RegOpenKeyEx or RegQueryValueEx. ;)

So you're looking at a registry value and you want to know if two HKEYs that point to a value are the same I suppose. If you compare the strings you passed to open the HKEYs and you check that the values are the same, then you would know that the HKEYs are the "same" but maybe I'm oversimplifying your problem.

[CornedBee]

RegOpenValueEx, yeah :o

The whole thing is part of an OO API to the registry, and I don't have access to any of the strings used to open the keys.

But I solved it differently by now, thanks to the people at cprogramming.com

[Marc G]

And what was the solution?

[CornedBee]

I didn't copy the HKEYs, instead I wrote a shared_hkey class, similar to a reference counting smart pointer.