Whats the difference between Process and ProcessStartInfo in C#?

Question

Whats the difference between Process and ProcessStartInfo? Ive used both to launch external programs but there has to be a reason there are two ways to do it. Here are two examples.

Process notePad = new Process();
notePad.StartInfo.FileName   = "notepad.exe";
notePad.StartInfo.Arguments = "ProcessStart.cs";
notePad.Start();

and

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.FileName = "notepad.exe";
startInfo.Arguments = "ProcessStart.cs";
Process.Start(startInfo)

Thanks

Answer 1

They are pretty close to the same, both are from the Process class. And there are actually 4 other overloads to Process.Start other than what you mentioned, all static.

One is a static method way to do it. It returns the Process object representing the process that is started. You could for example start a process with a single line of code by using this way.

And the other is a member method way to do it which reuses the current object instead of returning a new one.

Answer 2

Heh.

If you look closely at your code, you will note that they are both using the same classes. The StartInfo property in your first example is, unsurprsingly, a ProcessStartInfo. In your second example, you call the static .Start method on the Process class.

So what are the differences? Significant. They're different classes. One is for launching processes, one is for saying which process to launch (and lots of other little things, like capturing outpout, etc). In the first case, you just use the default ProcessStartInfo property that the class has.