> ChatGPT is not really equipped to do this level of code design because there are too many steps for it to handle at once

There's no code design going on here. My solution was literally just going through like 100 StackOverflow answers & Microsoft's god-awful documentation to get the 50 lines of code that does what I need it to do.

In fact, this is precisely what I'd hope ChatGPT would be good for. Most of my final code is simply copy-pasted from SO/example repos/official docs. He's the correct function (comments added by me so I'll know wtf this is meant to do when I look at it again in 3 months).

fn get_context_path() -> Result<String, Error> {
unsafe {
// Init COM libraries in this thread
CoInitializeEx(Some(ptr::null()), COINIT_APARTMENTTHREADED | COINIT_DISABLE_OLE1DDE)?;

// CabinetWClass is the Explorer window class
let class = s!("CabinetWClass");
let topmost_explorer = FindWindowA(class, None);
let foreground_window = GetForegroundWindow();

// Breadcrumbs IFF topmost window is an explorer window
if topmost_explorer == foreground_window {
let windows: IShellWindows = CoCreateInstance(&ShellWindows, None, CLSCTX_LOCAL_SERVER)?;
let unk_enum = windows._NewEnum()?;
let enum_variant: IEnumVARIANT = unk_enum.cast::<IEnumVARIANT>()?;

// Iterate through all IShellWindows
loop {
let mut fetched = 0;
let mut var: [VARIANT; 1] = [VARIANT::default(); 1];
let hr = enum_variant.Next(&mut var, &mut fetched);

// No more windows?
if hr == S_FALSE || fetched == 0 {
break;
}

// Not an IDispatch interface?
if var[0].Anonymous.Anonymous.vt != VT_DISPATCH {
continue;
}

// We should be able to turn an IShellWindow into an IShellBrowser
let shell_browser: IShellBrowser = IUnknown_QueryService(
var[0]
.Anonymous
.Anonymous
.Anonymous
.pdispVal
.as_ref()
.unwrap(),
&SID_STopLevelBrowser,
)?;
let shell_window = shell_browser.GetWindow()?;

// NOTE: The window we're matching with is actually the shell's parent
// Given that windows can be tabbed, we want to make sure the parent is the top
if GetParent(shell_window) == topmost_explorer {
let shell_view = shell_browser.QueryActiveShellView()?;

// Do some COM finagling, including a QueryInterface cast,
// until we get the folder path we're looking at
let folder_view: IFolderView = shell_view.cast::<IFolderView>()?;
let folder: IPersistFolder2 = folder_view.GetFolder::<IPersistFolder2>()?;
let curr_folder = folder.GetCurFolder()?;

// NOTE: This fails on non SYSPATH paths (e.g. "Home" or "Recent")
let path = SHGetNameFromIDList(curr_folder, SIGDN_FILESYSPATH)?;
let result = path.to_string()?;

// To figure out what path we're on (e.g. what tab is active), we try to match the
// parent title with the folder
// FIXME: Unless using full paths as titles, we can have ambiguities here
let mut title: [u16; 512] = [0; 512];
let len = GetWindowTextW(topmost_explorer, &mut title);
let title = String::from_utf16_lossy(&title[..len as usize]);

// We found the proper tab (child)
if result.contains(&title) {
// Cleanup COM & return path result
CoUninitialize();
return Ok(result);
// Must be another one (or something went wrong)
} else {
continue;
}
}
}
}
// Cleanup COM & fallback to blank string
CoUninitialize();
return Ok(String::from(""));
}
}