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The Old New Thing
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    The Old New Thing

    February 2016 | The Old New Thing

    The 2016/2017 Seattle Symphony subscription season at a glance
    The 2016/2017 Seattle Symphony subscription season at a glance
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 29, 2016Feb 29, 201602/29/16
    For many years, I've put together a little pocket guide to the Seattle Symphony subscription season for my symphony friends to help them decide which ticket package they want. For the past several years now, we haven't ordered any tickets at all because we all have young children, but I still make this guide out of some sense of obligation. ...

    Comments are closed.0Non-Computer
    How can I get the original shortcut target path with environment variables unexpanded?
    How can I get the original shortcut target path with environment variables unexpanded?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 29, 2016Feb 29, 201602/29/16
    A customer wanted to be able to get the target of a shortcut with environment variables unexpanded. The IShellLink::Get­Path method will expand environment variables. The way to get the unexpanded target path is to go for the EXP_SZ_LINK data in the shell link data list. We briefly encountered the shell link data list a while back. Now we...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Changing a loop into a promise or task chain
    Changing a loop into a promise or task chain
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 26, 2016Feb 26, 201602/26/16
    If you are dealing with PPL Tasks in C++ or Promises in JavaScript, you run into the problem of having to rephrase loops in the form of callbacks. (On the other hand, if you're using Tasks in C#, then you have the wonderful await keyword to do this all for you. If you're a JavaScript programmer, you can look at the async keyword coming to ES7...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    How do I preload a chunk of memory into a memory-mapped file?
    How do I preload a chunk of memory into a memory-mapped file?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 25, 2016Feb 25, 201602/25/16
    A customer had a moderate-sized memory-mapped file (a few dozen megabytes), and they wanted to preload the entire file into memory because their program accesses the contents of the file non-sequentially, which means the normal prefetcher cannot anticipate which page to preload. They are forcing the pages to be preloaded by manually walking ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    A static_cast is not always just a pointer adjustment
    A static_cast is not always just a pointer adjustment
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 24, 2016Feb 24, 201602/24/16
    Even without considering virtual base classes, a static_cast to move between a base class and a derived class can be more than just a pointer adjustment. Consider the following classes and functions. Suppose the compiler decided to lay out the memory for C like this: Now, you would think that converting a pointer to a C into a pointer to a...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Why does the date disappear from my taskbar, sometimes?
    Why does the date disappear from my taskbar, sometimes?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 23, 2016Feb 23, 201602/23/16
    A customer reported that the date vanished from their taskbar, but it was there yesterday. They included a screen shot, which showed a vertically-docked taskbar on a Chinese system, and the clock showed simply "10:50". The customer sent the message on October 10. I used my psychic powers to debug the problem. Maybe you can too. (Time passes...

    Comments are closed.0Tips/Support
    Finding the shortest binary string in a given interval
    Finding the shortest binary string in a given interval
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 22, 2016Feb 22, 201602/22/16
    Today's Little Program answers the question, "Given an interval of real numbers, find the shortest binary string that fits in that interval." For example, if you are given the range 0.1…0.3, then the answer is 0.25, whose binary representation is 0.01. Another way of phrasing the problem is that you are to find the simplest dyadic ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    When I try to calculate a performance counter manually, the answer is off by a factor of 100
    When I try to calculate a performance counter manually, the answer is off by a factor of 100
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 19, 2016Feb 19, 201602/19/16
    A customer was having difficulty calculating a performance counter manually. According to the formula in the documentation, performance counters that are of type PERF_PRECISION_100NS_TIMER should be calculated as (N₁−N₀)/(D₁−D₀). But when we do that, the results we get are a factor of 100 smaller than ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Nasty gotcha: VarCmp vs VariantCompare
    Nasty gotcha: VarCmp vs VariantCompare
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 18, 2016Feb 18, 201602/18/16
    There are two functions for comparing VARIANTs. One comes from the COM team, called VarCmp. Assuming a successful comparison, it returns This is consistent with the other Var­Xxx functions. On the other hand, the Variant­Compare function comes from the shell, and it returns Yuck. So be careful which one you're calling and how you...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Don’t just grab the foreground window and host UI on it, redux
    Don’t just grab the foreground window and host UI on it, redux
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenFebruary 17, 2016Feb 17, 201602/17/16
    Some time ago, I advised, "Don't just grab the foreground window and host UI on it." Today I learned of another application that failed to heed this advice. When the application's installer is launched,¹ it calls Get­Foreground­Window and uses that window as the owner for its dialogs. In particular, if you install the app by ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
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