Check if output is redirected

Question

I have a console application written in C# which processes some data then prints the results. Until the results are available there is a little animation ( / - \ | ) and progress percentage ( xx% ) which is constantly updating.

Obviously if the user redirects the output of my application this will be printed to the text file where output is redirected to. If possible I would like to avoid this.

So is there a way to detect if the output of my application is redirected? (if not I will close the question).

I am considering only showing the progress indicators when run with a specified parameter, but I'm hoping someone will have a good answer for me :)

Any input is appreciated, thank you :)

Answer 1

You can't. Redirected output is totally and wholly outside the scope of the executing program. You can however add a commandline option to disable your pretty output so that it can be used redirected too.

Answer 2

Rather than trying to determine whether or not the content is redirected, I would use Console.WriteLine (or Console.Out.WriteLine) to print your results and Console.Error.Write for your status updates. The screen output will show properly but not be reflected in the text file.

Answer 3

You can use the native method GetConsoleMode to see if stdout is going to a console or not.

This method is suggested by the remarks in the documentation for WriteConsole:

... determine whether the output handle is a console handle (one method is to call the GetConsoleMode function and check whether it succeeds)...