c++ - Best way to determine if two path reference to same file in Windows?

Question

How would I compare 2 strings to determine if they refer to the same path in Win32 using C/C++?

While this will handle a lot of cases it misses some things:

_tcsicmp(szPath1, szPath2) == 0

For example:

• forward slashes / backslashes

• relative / absolute paths.

[Edit] Title changed to match an existing C# question.

Answer 1

Open both files with CreateFile, call GetFileInformationByHandle for both, and compare dwVolumeSerialNumber, nFileIndexLow, nFileIndexHigh. If all three are equal they both point to the same file:

GetFileInformationByHandle function

BY_HANDLE_FILE_INFORMATION Structure