Capture and display console output at the same time

Question

Hi,

MSDN states that it is possible in .NET to capture the output of a process and display it in the console window at the same time.

Normally when you set StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true; the console window stays blank. As the MSDN site doesn't provide a sample for this I was wondering if anyone would have a sample or could point me to a sample?

When a Process writes text to its standard stream, that text is normally displayed on the console. By redirecting the StandardOutput stream, you can manipulate or suppress the output of a process. For example, you can filter the text, format it differently, or write the output to both the console and a designated log file. MSDN

This post is similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/786726/capture-standard-output-and-still-display-it-in-the-console-window by the way. But that post didn't end up with a working sample.

Thanks a lot,

Patrick

Answer 1

See this answer here on SO which I posted code for a process to exec netstat an redirect the output stream to a Stringbuilder instance. The process creates a hidden window and is not visible...

You can modify the code slightly by changing the values respectively

ps.CreateNoWindow = true; <--- Comment this out...
ps.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden; <--- Comment this out...

Answer 2

you can easily catch all messages using

Process build = new Process();
...
build.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
build.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
build.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
build.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
build.ErrorDataReceived += build_ErrorDataReceived;
build.OutputDataReceived += build_ErrorDataReceived;
build.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
...

and create the Event build_ErrorDataReceived

static void build_ErrorDataReceived(object sender, DataReceivedEventArgs e)
{
    string msg = e.Data;
    if (msg != null && msg.Length > 0)
    {
        // in msg you have the line you need!
    }
}

---

I add a little example

Screencast of the application

Solution Files (VS 2008)