How to tell if multiple files are selected when they are opened in windows

Hello, can someone help me, my question is how to tell if multiple file selections were made when they were opened (right-click->open). Through modifying the registry I already have my Java program start up when a file with specific extension is double-clicked.

The problem is when multiple files are opened at the same time, an instance of java program is created and run for each of the selected files. Ideally I would like it so that only one instance of java program is run, regardless of the number of selections.

When you try it with Microsoft media player or winamp for example, it seems that only one process is created and run (I don't see many processes spawning when I watch it using task manager). Maybe this is more of Windows issue rather than Java programming issue. Any help is appreciated.

[831 byte] By [_maxmkleea] at [2007-10-3 4:19:40]
# 1

If anybody wants to know, this can be solved by either 1) using DDE 2) using DropTarget (from Windows) 3) make a light-weight EXE dispatcher (eg. in C), and use file to have IPC between the dispatcher (which gets the filepath for each of the selections) and the java program. There can be other methods of course. Using the second option is the simplest but it requires WinXP and higher. I implemented it using option 3.. the downside of this is there's a warning message pop up when trying to open many (>20?) files at the same time by Windows. However, option 1 'seems' to have the same limitation. Having a java program created each time for each of the selections seems to be too slow, for viable option.

_maxmkleea at 2007-7-14 22:21:31 > top of Java-index,Desktop,Developing for the Desktop...