Novice question

[tg2003]

Hi,

I'm VB6 veteran, but VB.NET rookie.

What is considered the best to run some system command or 3rd party command from within my .NET application?

In VB6 I used

CreateObject("wscript.shell") and cmd /c

I found somewhere about

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("CMD.exe",strCmdLine);

Is it true? Or may something else?

Thanks in advance!

 

[chandlm]

I personally use process as you can easily code to wait for your launched process to finish before you continue running the rest of your code.




Hope this helps.

Matt

 

[tg2003]

How can I use the same "cmd" windows for all the duration of the running app?
I ask it since my app executes "cmd" actions a few times.

And how can I avoid of opening the black cmd screen in the background?

Thanks in advance!

 

[TipGiver]

To have better control (i mean not use the default settings) create an object or drag 'n drop a "Process" component (Components tab | Process).

If you do not use the component, you can write code:

Dim p As New System.Diagnostics.Process
'OR Dim p As New System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
p.CreateNoWindow = False
' p. ...
p.Start(...)

The Process 'thing' has been mentioned many times in here. Have a search too.

 

[TipGiver]

As for the "same cmd window"... i dont know if it is possible.

You can play a little with the 'p.RedirectStandardOutput = True' and the 'p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd' streamReader's String.

You should not show any more the cmd window (p.CreateNoWindow = True) and write the streamReader Stream to a textbox. It isnt difficult.

 

[Jelibeli]

With a lot of help from this and other VB support areas, I use this function to execute DOS commands, and wait until they are done:

Public Function RunDos(ByVal strWorkingDir As String, ByVal strCommand As String, ByVal strArgs As String) As String
        prcDosProcess.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = strWorkingDir
        prcDosProcess.StartInfo.FileName = strCommand
        prcDosProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = strArgs
        prcDosProcess.Start()
        prcDosProcess.PriorityClass = ProcessPriorityClass.High
        RunDos = prcDosProcess.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd
        prcDosProcess.WaitForExit()
        prcDosProcess.Close()
    End Function

This requires that you drag a System.Diagnostics.Process component (listed as Process under Components) onto your form, and name it prcDosProcess. From the properties sheet you can configure whether or not a DOS window is opened, among many other configurable options.

You would then call the function something like this:

RunDos("c:\Directory","copy","source target")

or

strDosOutput = RunDos("c:\Directory","copy","source target")

which would both execute 'copy source target' in the directory 'c:\directory'. The second method should return the dos output as the string strDosOutput, but I don't think it actually works.

You can see that I still like to prefix names with an idea of what they are, just to help me keep track of what I'm up to. I'm only an intermittent programmer, so I need to remind myself what I was up to last time I opened the code.

Hope this helps.
--
JB