Sending commands to cmd prompt in C#

Question

For one of my implementations I am working on a tool that is supposed to send/retrieve commands/results to/from the cmd window. Everything works fine but the Use case below

Answer 1

You cannot send commands to a shell this way. The string in info.Arguments is the arguments provided to the program on the command line. If you want the cmd.exe shell to execute a series of command and then quit you will have to provide the /c argument. If you have multiple commands that you want it to perform you will either have to put the commands in a batch file and execute that or enclose them in quotes and separate them with &&, i.e. info.Arguments = @"/c ""cd \ && dir""";. Your other issue with never returning is that cmd.exe opens in interactive mode by default when it is executed without any, or proper, arguments. The /c option tells cmd.exe to execute the relevant commands and then quit.

Additionally, interpreters like python and perl sometimes have weird behaviors when launched directly from ProcessStartInfo. If info.Arguments = @"""MyPerlProgram.pl"""; with perl.exe doesn't work, you may find it necessary to launch them inside cmd.exe to get normal behavior out of them, i.e. info.Arguments = @"/c ""perl.exe ""MyPerlProgram.pl""""";.

See Cmd and ProcessStartInfo.Arguments Property.

To answer your Edit 3 problem, you're probably not correctly hooking into the outputs. Instead of trying to hook the StreamReader's BaseStream, hook the OutputDataReceived event with this.shellProcess.OutputDataReceived += ProcessOutputHandler; before you call Start where ProcessOutputHandler has a signature like public static void ProcessOutputHandler(object sendingProcess, DataReceivedEventArgs outLine). Immediately after calling Start, call this.shellProcess.BeginOutputReadLine();. The process is similar for the error ouput as well. See Process.BeginOutputReadLine Method and Process.BeginErrorReadLine Method for more details.

If you still have a problem, what do you get if you just try process.StartInfo.Arguments = @"/c ""python.exe -c ""import sys; print 'Test.';""""";?

Also, the code below demonstrates most of the necessary concepts for shell communication:

public static void Main()
{
    using (Process process = new Process())
    {
        process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
        process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
        process.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = @"C:\";
        process.StartInfo.FileName = Path.Combine(Environment.SystemDirectory, "cmd.exe");

        // Redirects the standard input so that commands can be sent to the shell.
        process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
        // Runs the specified command and exits the shell immediately.
        //process.StartInfo.Arguments = @"/c ""dir""";

        process.OutputDataReceived += ProcessOutputDataHandler;
        process.ErrorDataReceived += ProcessErrorDataHandler;

        process.Start();
        process.BeginOutputReadLine();
        process.BeginErrorReadLine();

        // Send a directory command and an exit command to the shell
        process.StandardInput.WriteLine("dir");
        process.StandardInput.WriteLine("exit");

        process.WaitForExit();
    }
}

public static void ProcessOutputDataHandler(object sendingProcess, DataReceivedEventArgs outLine)
{
    Console.WriteLine(outLine.Data);
}

public static void ProcessErrorDataHandler(object sendingProcess, DataReceivedEventArgs outLine)
{
    Console.WriteLine(outLine.Data);
}

You may have threading issues causing your problems. I've done some further work with this and was able to get a textbox on a form to update with the following code:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;
using System.Timers;

namespace DummyFormsApplication
{
    class ProcessLauncher : IDisposable
    {
        private Form1 form;
        private Process process;
        private bool running;

        public bool InteractiveMode
        {
            get;
            private set;
        }

        public ProcessLauncher(Form1 form)
        {
            this.form = form;

            process = new Process();
            process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
            process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
            process.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = @"C:\";
            process.StartInfo.FileName = Path.Combine(Environment.SystemDirectory, "cmd.exe");

            // Redirects the standard input so that commands can be sent to the shell.
            process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;

            process.OutputDataReceived +=new DataReceivedEventHandler(process_OutputDataReceived);
            process.ErrorDataReceived += new DataReceivedEventHandler(process_ErrorDataReceived);
            process.Exited += new EventHandler(process_Exited);
        }

        public void Start()
        {
            if (running == false)
            {
                running = true;
                InteractiveMode = true;

                // Runs the specified command and exits the shell immediately upon completion.
                process.StartInfo.Arguments = @"/c ""C:\python27\python.exe -i""";

                process.Start();

                process.BeginOutputReadLine();
                process.BeginErrorReadLine();
            }
        }

        public void Start(string scriptFileName)
        {
            if (running == false)
            {
                running = true;
                InteractiveMode = false;

                // Runs the specified command and exits the shell immediately upon completion.
                process.StartInfo.Arguments = string.Format(@"/c ""C:\python27\python.exe ""{0}""""", scriptFileName);
            }
        }

        public void Abort()
        {
            process.Kill();
        }

        public void SendInput(string input)
        {
            process.StandardInput.Write(input);
            process.StandardInput.Flush();
        }

        private void process_OutputDataReceived(object sendingProcess, DataReceivedEventArgs outLine)
        {
            if (outLine.Data != null)
            {
                form.Invoke(form.appendConsoleTextDelegate, new object[] { outLine.Data });
            }
        }

        private void process_ErrorDataReceived(object sendingProcess, DataReceivedEventArgs outLine)
        {
            if (outLine.Data != null)
            {
                form.Invoke(form.appendConsoleTextDelegate, new object[] { outLine.Data });
            }
        }

        private void process_Exited(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            running = false;
        }

        public void Dispose()
        {
            if (process != null)
            {
                process.Dispose();
            }
        }
    }
}

I created a form and added a textbox and the following code in the form:

    public delegate void AppendConsoleText(string text);
    public AppendConsoleText appendConsoleTextDelegate;

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        appendConsoleTextDelegate = new AppendConsoleText(textBox1_AppendConsoleText);
        using (ProcessLauncher launcher = new ProcessLauncher(this))
        {
            launcher.Start();

            launcher.SendInput("import sys;\n");
            launcher.SendInput("print \"Test.\";\n");
            launcher.SendInput("exit()\n");
        }
    }

    private void textBox1_AppendConsoleText(string text)
    {
        textBox1.AppendText(string.Format("{0}\r\n", text));
    }

One thing to note is that if the Form1_Load event doesn't complete, Invoke will hang until it does. If you have long-running code in an event you'll either need to invoke asynchronously using BeginInvoke, or periodically call DoEvents in your long-running code.

EDIT

Per your comment, I've modified the code to work with interactive submissions. There is, however, a problem. The python prompt (>>>) is provided on the StandardError output and it does not echo the StandardInput. It also does not terminate the line. This makes detecting a prompt difficult and causes some out of order output of the prompt characters due to the process_ErrorDataReceived not firing until either the process ends or a line end is seen.