Run a shell command from a .NET application

Question

I need to execute a shell command from my .NET application, unlike os.execute (a bit down on this page) in Lua . However, with a cursory search, I could not find anything. How to do it?

Answer 1

 System.Diagnostics.Process p = new System.Diagnostics.Process(); p.StartInfo.FileName = "blah.lua arg1 arg2 arg3"; p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = true; p.Start(); 

Another way would be to use P / Invoke and use ShellExecute directly:

 [DllImport("shell32.dll")] static extern IntPtr ShellExecute( IntPtr hwnd, string lpOperation, string lpFile, string lpParameters, string lpDirectory, ShowCommands nShowCmd); 

Answer 2

Maybe you should consider an asynchronous approach if the script takes some time.

Here's some code that does this, redirects the standard output to display for display on the form ( WPF , Windows Forms , whatever). Note that I assume that you do not need user input, so it does not create a console window that looks better:

 BackgroundWorker worker = new BackgroundWorker(); ... // Wire up event in the constructor or wherever is appropriate worker.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(worker_DoWork); worker.RunWorkerCompleted += new RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler(worker_RunWorkerCompleted); ... // Then to execute your script worker.RunWorkerAsync("somearg anotherarg thirdarg"); void worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e) { StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(); Process process = new Process(); process.StartInfo.FileName = "blah.lua"; process.StartInfo.Arguments = (string)e.Argument; process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false; process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true; process.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true; process.Start(); result.Append(process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()); process.WaitForExit(); e.Result = result.AppendLine().ToString(); } void worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) { if (e.Result != null) console.Text = e.Result.ToString(); else if (e.Error != null) console.Text = e.Error.ToString(); else if (e.Cancelled) console.Text = "User cancelled process"; } 

Answer 3

In C #, there is an easy way to handle this. Using the System.Diagnostics namespace, there is a class for handling spawning processes.

 System.Diagnostics.Process process = new System.Diagnostics.Process(); process.StartInfo.FileName = "App.exe"; process.StartInfo.Arguments = "arg1 arg2 arg3"; process.Start(); Console.WriteLine(process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd(); 

There are additional options for handling things like not creating a console window, redirecting input or output, and much more that you need.