Full Threaded Shellicious

November 22, 2004

I couldn't resist adding some features to Shellicious. You can now run shell commands either asynchronously (as before) or synchronously, like so:

    Private WithEvents _s As New Shell
    Private _IsExecutionComplete As Boolean = False

    Public Sub Main()
        _s.UseNewThread = True
        _s.Execute("C:\LongRunningConsoleApp.exe")
        Do While Not _IsExecutionComplete
            '-- do other work here..
            Thread.Sleep(20)
        Loop
        Console.WriteLine("Exiting Sub Main()..")
        Console.ReadLine()
    End Sub

    Private Sub OutputLine(ByVal LineText As String) Handles _s.OutputLine
        Console.WriteLine(LineText)
    End Sub

    Private Sub ExecutionComplete(ByVal TimedOut As Boolean) _
        Handles _s.ExecutionComplete

        _IsExecutionComplete = True
        Console.WriteLine("execution complete; did we time out? " & TimedOut)
        If _s.ExitCode <> 0 Then
            Console.WriteLine(_s.Error)
        End If
        Console.WriteLine(_s.ExecutionTime)
        Console.WriteLine(_s.ExitCode)
    End Sub

I updated the code in the original post. And this time I remembered to give the threads names, which always helps in debugging:

The thread 'ShellErrorThread' (0xca4) has exited with code 0 (0x0).
The thread 'ShellOutputThread' (0x934) has exited with code 0 (0x0).
The thread 'ShellLaunchThread' (0x5c0) has exited with code 0 (0x0).

So far so good. The synchronous behavior respects the same .MaximumWaitSeconds property as before, and there's a new .CancelExecution method if you want to bail out on demand.