Unix commands from C#

Question

Is there an implementation of a Unix shell and commands as a .Net assembly. This could be a wrapper around cygwin, or a standalone built from public domain source. The kind of commands I'd really like to be able to use are wc, tar, cpio, ps, kill, cat, at ...

how cool would it be to do this (Pseudo code)

usng cygwin

.....

 Shell myShell = new Shell("cat file1 file2 >> file3");
 myShell.Run(DateTime.Now);

Edit > I can see the shell out approach working, I've used that approach myself in the past. However, it just feels ugly, it's another process running, it's not secure, it requires another install on client machines, you have to muck around build command strings. As a further example

 Shell myShell = new Shell();
 myShell.Infiles.Add (streamObject);
 myShell.Outfiles.Add (streamObject);

 myShell.Stderr.NewOutput += myErrorLogger();

etc

Answer 1

Have you looked at PowerShell? Many tasks using Unix commands can be translated into PowerShell.

Answer 2

Probably something like the following will do.

Shell myShell = new Shell("c:\cygwin\bin\bash cat file1 file2 >> file3");  
myShell.Run(DateTime.Now);

But, I don't have an environment to test it.

Give it a try.

Answer 3

I don't know of any implementations, but I think what you have is an interesting idea:) Would be a fun project for someone to develop a managed version of busybox that can run in its own console and be consumable by a .NET assembly like in your sample code. But would something like this really be useful to many people?