How to Programatically Terminate an MFC Application

WINDOWS             | WINDOWS NT

The information in this article applies to:

The Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) included with:

• Microsoft Visual C++ for Windows, versions 1.0, 1.5, 1.51, and 1.52
• Microsoft Visual C++ 32-bit Edition, versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, and 4.0

SUMMARY

Under certain conditions, you may want to terminate an MFC application programatically. MFC does not provide a public function to gracefully exit an application.

MORE INFORMATION

A method for dealing with this is to create a function in your application like the following:

   void ExitApp()
   {
        // same as double-clicking on main window close box
        ASSERT(AfxGetApp()->m_pMainWnd != NULL);
        AfxGetApp()->m_pMainWnd->SendMessage(WM_CLOSE);
   }

If you are using MFC, version 2.5 or later, you can take advantage of a new global MFC function, "AfxGetMainWnd", to simplify the code:

   void ExitMFCApp()
   {
        // same as double-clicking on main window close box
        ASSERT(AfxGetMainWnd() != NULL);
        AfxGetMainWnd()->SendMessage(WM_CLOSE);
   }