I'm writing a CLR application with Microsoft Visual C++. I'm trying to get the program to access user profile directory in order to write a file into My Documents folder of the current user. But, how can I access the user profile directory under Windows? I tried %userprofile% in the path but it didn't work. Please show me with some code examples. By the way, does anyone know how we can make the program minimize/ hide to the system background? So it does its job quietly and won't disturb the users. Thanks in advance.

You need to expand the environment variable, then form the string.

.NET method:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/77zkk0b6.aspx

C++ method:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms683188.aspx

Er, I should say Unmanaged C++ method.