Open Most Recent File

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This is very simple, but I had never seen it anywhere else until I had to do it myself. It should save everyone some digging through the documentation.

To make your program re-open the most recently used file, simply add the following code to your App’s InitInstance() between the calls to ParseCommandLine() and ProcessShellCommand().

// Parse command line for standard shell commands, DDE, file open

CCommandLineInfo cmdInfo;

ParseCommandLine(cmdInfo);

// ================= Begin Inserted code =========================

// If a file is not specified on the command line, open the last file

if ( ! cmdInfo.m_strFileName.GetLength() )

{

   CString strFileName;

   if (m_pRecentFileList->GetDisplayName(strFileName, 0, “”, 0, true))

   {

      cmdInfo.m_strFileName = strFileName;

      cmdInfo.m_nShellCommand =

      CCommandLineInfo::FileOpen;

   }

}

// ================== End Inserted code ==========================
// Dispatch commands specified on the command line

if (!ProcessShellCommand(cmdInfo))

return FALSE;

Nico van Ravenstein adds:

There is a problem with opening the most recent file when the filepath is too long. The directory gets abbreviated by the function AbbreviateName like C:some path…file.txt. Thats nice for a windows title or in the last used list but you can’t open a file with it.

So a better way is this:

// Add this to your applications InitInstance function

//

// If a file is not specified on the command line, open the last file

if (!cmdInfo.m_strFileName.GetLength())

{

    if (m_pRecentFileList->m_nSize > 0 &&

    !m_pRecentFileList->m_arrNames[0].IsEmpty())

    {

        cmdInfo.m_strFileName   = m_pRecentFileList->m_arrNames[0];

        cmdInfo.m_nShellCommand = CCommandLineInfo::FileOpen;

    }

}

Updated 4 April 1998