Running shell commands and executables from Regira.System, and reading back what they wrote.
Run shell commands or executables and capture their output.
public interface IProcessHelper
{
IProcessOutput ExecuteCommand(string command, bool waitForOutput = false);
IProcessOutput ExecuteCommand(string command, IDictionary<string, string> environment, bool waitForOutput = false);
IProcessOutput ExecuteFile(string filename, bool waitForOutput = false, string? arguments = null);
IProcessOutput ExecuteFile(string filename, IDictionary<string, string> environment, bool waitForOutput = false, string? arguments = null);
}
ProcessHelper is the default implementation. ExecuteCommand writes the command to a temporary .bat file (in Options.TempFolder, or the system’s temp folder), executes it and deletes it again — Windows only; every call has a file of its own, so one instance serves concurrent calls. ExecuteFile starts the given executable directly, on any platform. Pass waitForOutput: true to capture stdout/stderr — both streams are drained at the same time, so a process that writes more than a pipe buffer holds to one of them (a command-line tool logging its progress to stderr, say) cannot stall the call. The text is reassembled from line events, so it carries the platform’s line ending and a trailing newline rather than the exact bytes the process wrote — trim it before comparing.
The environment overloads set variables on the process instead of on the command line — that is where a value belongs when it must not be written to the generated script, such as a password. They are default interface methods, so a custom IProcessHelper keeps compiling. One that does not override ExecuteCommand has the script set the variables instead (set "KEY=VALUE" ahead of the command, which is batch syntax — an implementation running another shell has to override it): they reach the process just the same, but their values end up wherever that implementation writes the command. One that does not override ExecuteFile throws — there is no command to set them from, and a variable silently dropped surfaces as a failure somewhere else entirely.
IProcessHelper processHelper = new ProcessHelper(new ProcessHelper.Options
{
TempFolder = @"C:\Temp" // optional; holds the temporary .bat files, created when missing and left in place
});
IProcessOutput result = processHelper.ExecuteCommand("dotnet --version", waitForOutput: true);
Console.WriteLine(result.Output); // captured stdout
Console.WriteLine(result.ExitCode); // process exit code
var environment = new Dictionary<string, string> { ["PGPASSWORD"] = "pass" };
processHelper.ExecuteCommand("pg_dump --no-password mydb", environment);
public interface IProcessOutput
{
string? Output { get; set; }
string? Error { get; set; }
int ExitCode { get; set; }
}
Output and Error are only populated when waitForOutput is true.
Open a path or an IBinaryFile with the OS default application (a file without a path is written to a temp file first):
IProcessHelper processHelper = new ProcessHelper();
IBinaryFile binaryFile = new BinaryFileItem { FileName = "invoice.pdf" };
processHelper.OpenFileByOS(@"C:\docs\invoice.pdf");
processHelper.OpenFileByOS(binaryFile);
WebHostOptions, background task queues, Windows Service installer.csproj filesApache License 2.0 — this package contains no license validation and no runtime limits. See LICENSE. A few companion packages are commercially licensed with a free tier; see the licensing overview.