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Retrieving Information About a Device

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Every device responds to the capability (MCI_GETDEVCAPS), status (MCI_STATUS), and info (MCI_INFO) commands. These commands obtain information about the device. For example, the following command returns "true" if a cdaudio device can eject the disc:

mciSendString(
    "capability cdaudio can eject", 
    lpszReturnString, lstrlen(lpszReturnString), NULL);

The flags listed for the required and basic commands provide a minimum amount of information about a device. Many devices supplement the required and basic commands with extended flags to provide additional information about the device.