How to Programatically Terminate an MFC Application

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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);
   }

As you can see, this is implemented as a global function, which can be called from anywhere in your application. It simply sends a WM_CLOSE message to your application's mainframe window. This initiates an orderly shutdown of the application.

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);
   }

NOTE: Always call CDocument::SetModifiedFlag() after changing your document data. This will ensure that the framework prompts the user to save before shutdown. If you need more extensive control over the shutdown procedure, you can override CDocument::SaveModified().

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Foundation Class Library 4.2, when used with:

Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual C++ 1.5 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual C++ 1.51
Microsoft Visual C++ 1.52 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual C++ 1.0 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 Professional Edition
Microsoft Visual C++ 2.1
Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 Standard Edition

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KB117320

Retired KB Content Disclaimer

This article was written about products for which Microsoft no longer offers support. Therefore, this article is offered "as is" and will no longer be updated.

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