Launch Program with Parameters - c#

How do I write a very simple program that uses the command line to navigate to a program in the user's Program Files directory, then launches the .exe with a parameter? For example:
"C:\etc\Program Files\ProgramFolder\Program.exe C:\etc\desktop\file.spp C\etc\desktop\file.txt"
This launches a program with a certain project file and a .txt file along with it.

You can use the ProcessStartInfo.Arguments property to specify the string of arguments for your program:
ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.FileName = #"C:\etc\Program Files\ProgramFolder\Program.exe";
startInfo.Arguments = #"C:\etc\desktop\file.spp C:\etc\desktop\file.txt";
Process.Start(startInfo);

Just create a new text file, name it "go.cmd" and put the following in there:
"C:\etc\Program Files\ProgramFolder\Program.exe C:\etc\desktop\file.spp C\etc\desktop\file.txt"
Voila, you have your program!

if you want to pass full executable path and parameters the program you need is the windows command prompt.

Related

How to call C++ exe with multiple parameters from command line using C# .net

i am performing offline operations on images taking image as a input with parameters and processing it in VTK C++ exe i am unable to pass parameters to C++ exe through C# program and retrive output .
please explain me with some example
If you just mean that you have a compiled C++ program (which we'll call "foo.exe", with path stored in string "exe_folder") and you want to call that with command line parameters (stored in string "exe_params") from C#, then the following should work:
string exe_params = "target_image.jpeg HOUGH_TRANSFORM"; // Or whatever params are appropriate.
string exe_full_path = Path.Combine(exe_folder, "foo.exe");
Process proc = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(exe_full_path, exe_params);
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/h6ak8zt5(v=vs.110).aspx
Let say that your executable is called test.exe and it is in the test dir. For me, the following would be working:
Process process = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
startInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe";
startInfo.Arguments = "/C cd C:\\..test\\ && test.exe target_image.jpg yourtransformation";
process.StartInfo = startInfo;
process.Start();
If you have further problems, try setting the working directory of processStartInfo.

Run type as process in c#

I can join videos in windows at command line with
type vid1.avi vid2.avi > vidjoined.avi
I try to run this in c#:
ProcessStartInfo cmdStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
cmdStartInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe";
cmdStartInfo.Arguments = "type vid1.avi vid2.avi > vidjoined.avi";
Process cmdProcess = new Process();
cmdProcess.StartInfo = cmdStartInfo;
cmdProcess.Start();
cmdProcess.WaitForExit(120000);
What is wrong with my code?
It runs forever and I get no console output.
I'm not sure it's valid to concatenate two AVI files together, but that aside:
Try changing your arguments to:
cmdStartInfo.Arguments = "/c type vid1.avi vid2.avi > vidjoined.avi"
The "/c" will cause the command shell to execute and then exit.
Also, the working directory is going to be wherever cmd.exe is. Your relative paths to your files will likely not resolve properly. Either set cmdStartInfo.WorkingDirectory to the directory that your files are in, or use fully qualified paths in your arguments.

Running EXE with parameters

I need help in trying to execute an executable from my C# application.
Suppose the path is cPath, the EXE is HHTCtrlp.exe and the parameter that has to be passed is cParams.
How would I go about this?
The reason why the path is a variable is that there are 3 different EXE files to run and the path will change depending on which one will run, same with the parameter string.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
To start the process with parameters, you can use following code:
string filename = Path.Combine(cPath,"HHTCtrlp.exe");
var proc = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(filename, cParams);
To kill/exit the program again, you can use following code:
proc.CloseMainWindow();
proc.Close();
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("PATH to exe", "Command Line Arguments");
ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(string.Concat(cPath, "\\", "HHTCtrlp.exe"));
startInfo.Arguments =cParams;
startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(startInfo);

How to send series of commands to a command window process?

We have a few commands(batch files/executables) on our network path which we have to call to initialize our 'development environment' for that command window. It sets some environmental variables, adds stuff to the Path etc. (Then only whatever working commands we type will be recognized & I don't know what goes inside those initializing commands)
Now my problem is, I want to call a series of those 'working commands' using a C# program, and certainly, they will work only if the initial setup is done. How can I do that? Currently, I'm creating a batch file by scratch from the program like this for example:
file.Writeline("InitializationStep1.bat")
file.Writeline("InitializeStep2.exe")
file.Writeline("InitializeStep3.exe")
Then the actual commands
file.Writeline("Dowork -arguments -flags -blah -blah")
file.Writeline("DoMoreWork -arguments -flags -blah -blah")
Then finally close the file writer, and run this batch file.
Now if I directly execute this using Process.<strike>Run</strike>Start("cmd.exe","Dowork -arguments"); it won't run.
How can I achieve this in a cleaner way, so that I have to run the initialization commands only once? (I could run cmd.exe each time with all three initializers, but they take a lot of time so I want to do it only once)
As #Hakeem has pointed out, System.Diagnostic.Process does not have a static Run method. I think you are referring to the method Start.
Once you have completed building the batch file, then simply execute it using the following code,
Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo.FileName = batchFilePath;
p.StartInfo.Arguments = #"-a arg1 -b arg2";
p.Start();
Note that the # symbol is required to be prefixed to the argument string so that escape sequence characters like \ are treated as literals.
Alternative code
Process.Start(batchFilePath, #"-a arg1 -b arg2");
or
ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
processStartInfo.FileName = batchFilePath;
processStartInfo.Arguments = #"-a arg1 -b arg2";
Process.Start(processStartInfo);
More information
Process.Start method
Example of multi command batch file
dir /O
pause
dir
pause
Save this file as .bat and then execute using the Start method. In this case you can specify the argument with the command in the batch file itself (in the above example, the /O option is specified for the dir command.
I suppose you already have done the batch file creation part, now just append the arguments to the commands in the batch file.
Redirecting Input to a process
Since you want to send multiple commands to the same cmd process, you can redirect the standard input of the process to the take the input from your program rather than the keyboard.
Code is inspired from a similar question at: Execute multiple command lines with the same process using C#
private string ProcessRunner()
{
ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("cmd.exe");
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
processStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
processStartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
Process process = Process.Start(processStartInfo);
if (process != null)
{
process.StandardInput.WriteLine("dir");
process.StandardInput.WriteLine("mkdir testDir");
process.StandardInput.WriteLine("echo hello");
//process.StandardInput.WriteLine("yourCommand.exe arg1 arg2");
process.StandardInput.Close(); // line added to stop process from hanging on ReadToEnd()
string outputString = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
return outputString;
}
return string.Empty;
}
The method returns the output of the command execution. In a similar fashion, you could also redirect and read the StandardOuput stream of the process.
The Process.Run method that you mentioned, is that from the Process class in System.Diagnostics namespace? AFAIK, the Process type doesn't have either a static or instance method named Run. If you haven't already I'd try with the Start method on Process, either instance or static

Mimic Windows' 'Run' window in .NET

I would like to mimic the Run command in Windows in my program. In other words, I would like to give the user the ability to "run" an arbitrary piece of text exactly as would happen if they typed it into the run box.
While System.Diagnostics.Process.Start() gets me close, I can't seem to get certain things like environment variables such as %AppData% working. I just keep getting the message "Windows cannot find '%AppData%'..."
You can use the Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables method to turn %AppData% into whatever it actually corresponds to.
Depending on what you're trying to do, you could also call CMD.EXE, which will expand your environment variables automatically. The example below will do a DIR of your %appdata% folder, and redirect the stdOut to the debug:
StreamReader stdOut;
Process proc1 = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo("CMD.EXE", "/C dir %appdata%");
psi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
psi.UseShellExecute = false;
proc1.StartInfo = psi;
proc1.Start();
stdOut = proc1.StandardOutput;
System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write(stdOut.ReadToEnd());

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