Ever wondered how Visual Studio executes a process - such as a compiler - and displays the text it returns in its own window? It's actually really easy - and here's a simple example as to how.
Shared Function GetProcessText(ByVal process As String, ByVal param As String, ByVal workingDir As String) As String
Dim p As Process = New Process
' this is the name of the process we want to execute
p.StartInfo.FileName = process
If Not (workingDir = "") Then
p.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = workingDir
End If
.StartInfo.Arguments = param
' need to set this to false to redirect output
p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = False
p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = True
' start the process
p.Start
' read all the output
' here we could just read line by line and display it
' in an output window
Dim output As String = p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd
' wait for the process to terminate
p.WaitForExit
Return output
End Function
James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audience ...
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