I'm using the Winexec command and trying to use a string as the argument, but Winexec takes only a Pchar as its argument. I can't figure out how to put a regular string into a Pchar, or how to make a Pchar 'point' to a character string.
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WinAPI calls can be pretty confusing, huh? Let's say you have a function called WinAPICall that takes a PChar as an argument. Here are a couple of ways to make the call: 
First Method (This will only work for Delphi 2.0 and above, which supports casting):
WinAPICall(PChar(MyStringVal));
Second Method: 
procedure CallWinApiCall(S : String);
var
 Val : String;
 pVal : PChar;
begin
 Val := S;
 {Initialize memory for the PChar}
 GetMem(pVal, Length(Val));
 {Copy the contents of Val to PChar}
 pVal := StrPCopy(pVal, Val);
 WinAPICall(pVal);
 
 {This next step is ABSOLUTELY necessary}
 FreeMem(pVal, Length(Val));
end; 
In any case, that should do it for you pretty nicely.