CSIDLS

A Windows command-line utility that enumerates all legacy CSIDL_* special folder values and displays their resolved paths on the current system.

Output

Each line of output is tab-separated in the format:

<numeric value>    <CSIDL name>    <resolved path>

Folders that do not exist on the current system are flagged as:

*** DOESN'T EXIST ***.

Notes

• The CSIDL_* API and SHGetFolderPath are deprecated since Windows Vista in favour of SHGetKnownFolderPath, but are used here intentionally to document the CSIDL values themselves.
• CSIDL_MYDOCUMENTS and CSIDL_PERSONAL share the same numeric value (0x0005) and will resolve to the same path. Both are listed for completeness.

Requirements

• Windows
• Visual Studio (C++14 or later)

Background

This program was originally written to illustrate a quirk encountered when using the SHGetFolderPath API under different platforms.

It was published in association with an item titled "SHGetFolderPath() Platform Differences" in the "Tech Tips" column of Windows Developer's Journal, March 2002, Volume 13, Number 3.

For anyone wondering, here was the quirk:

"Windows 2000 and XP natively implement SHGetFolderPath(), and behave as documented. But under NT4 and Windows 9x, it exhibits a quirk for some CSIDL values: it returns S_OK with an empty string for the folder path."

The current documentation (Dec 2023) does imply that the string may be empty despite the API returning success — so this behaviour is now at least acknowledged by Microsoft.