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Creating a Windows Shell context menu item that takes a single file as an argument is easy. See this question for an example.
However, how do you create a context menu item that takes multiple files as arguments? Say, for a diff-merge tool (in my case P4Merge), although the same technique would no doubt be applicable for other applications as well.
I've installed P4Merge but it does not add an item to the context menu automatically so I will have to do it manually.
When I tried using:
"C:\Program Files\Perforce\p4merge.exe" %1 %2
as the command line I got an error:
Errors: At least two files are needed. Cannot open only one file. P4Merge needs 0, 2, or 3 files.
When I tried using:
"C:\Program Files\Perforce\p4merge.exe" %0 %1
as the command line it opened two instances of P4Merge, one for each file.
It appears the correct file names are being passed through to %0 and %1 but a different instance of the P4Merge application is being executed for each one.
I currently have SourceGear's DiffMerge tool which has an item on the Shell context menu and that works beautifully, as I am able to select two files and use the context menu item to run a diff on them. I've trying searching the registry to see what arguments DiffMerge uses but I could not find a DiffMerge commandline that included arguments.
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As you found out, there is no way to do what you want with a simple registry hack. There is only %1 because the extension only applies to one object and is executed separately for multiple objects. It requires programming a full-on shell-extension. There are however some programs/shell-extensions that let you do some more advanced context-menu stuff than a registry hack will allow. (The only one I can remember is MMM.) Unfortunately, I think they tend to be limited to letting you make submenus rather than allow for multiple objects to be dropped.
– Synetech – 2012-07-26T02:36:25.883