Simon Mourier's Blog - How to get the PIDL of any folder to use in RegisterChangeNotify

c#
winapi
windows-shell

How to get the PIDL of any folder to use in RegisterChangeNotify

Apr 21, 2015 See the question and my original answer on StackOverflow

You can find a PIDL from a path with the ILCreateFromPath method (for a real file/folder path):

IntPtr pidl = ILCreateFromPath(@"c:\path\file.ext");
if (pidl != IntPtr.Zero)
try
{
    // do something
}
finally
{
    Marshal.FreeCoTaskMem(pidl);
}