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Capturing standard out and error with Start-Process

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What is start-process PowerShell?

The Start-Process cmdlet starts one or more processes on the local computer. By default, Start-Process creates a new process that inherits all the environment variables that are defined in the current process.

How do I redirect output to a file in PowerShell?

There are two PowerShell operators you can use to redirect output: > and >> . The > operator is equivalent to Out-File while >> is equivalent to Out-File -Append . The redirection operators have other uses like redirecting error or verbose output streams.

How do you wait for a process to finish in PowerShell?

The Wait-Process cmdlet waits for one or more running processes to be stopped before accepting input. In the PowerShell console, this cmdlet suppresses the command prompt until the processes are stopped. You can specify a process by process name or process ID (PID), or pipe a process object to Wait-Process .


That's how Start-Process was designed for some reason. Here's a way to get it without sending to file:

$pinfo = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$pinfo.FileName = "ping.exe"
$pinfo.RedirectStandardError = $true
$pinfo.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
$pinfo.UseShellExecute = $false
$pinfo.Arguments = "localhost"
$p = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
$p.StartInfo = $pinfo
$p.Start() | Out-Null
$p.WaitForExit()
$stdout = $p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()
$stderr = $p.StandardError.ReadToEnd()
Write-Host "stdout: $stdout"
Write-Host "stderr: $stderr"
Write-Host "exit code: " + $p.ExitCode

In the code given in the question, I think that reading the ExitCode property of the initiation variable should work.

$process = Start-Process -FilePath ping -ArgumentList localhost -NoNewWindow -PassThru -Wait
$process.ExitCode

Note that (as in your example) you need to add the -PassThru and -Wait parameters (this caught me out for a while).


IMPORTANT:

We have been using the function as provided above by LPG.

However, this contains a bug you might encounter when you start a process that generates a lot of output. Due to this you might end up with a deadlock when using this function. Instead use the adapted version below:

Function Execute-Command ($commandTitle, $commandPath, $commandArguments)
{
  Try {
    $pinfo = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $pinfo.FileName = $commandPath
    $pinfo.RedirectStandardError = $true
    $pinfo.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
    $pinfo.UseShellExecute = $false
    $pinfo.Arguments = $commandArguments
    $p = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
    $p.StartInfo = $pinfo
    $p.Start() | Out-Null
    [pscustomobject]@{
        commandTitle = $commandTitle
        stdout = $p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()
        stderr = $p.StandardError.ReadToEnd()
        ExitCode = $p.ExitCode
    }
    $p.WaitForExit()
  }
  Catch {
     exit
  }
}

Further information on this issue can be found at MSDN:

A deadlock condition can result if the parent process calls p.WaitForExit before p.StandardError.ReadToEnd and the child process writes enough text to fill the redirected stream. The parent process would wait indefinitely for the child process to exit. The child process would wait indefinitely for the parent to read from the full StandardError stream.


I also had this issue and ended up using Andy's code to create a function to clean things up when multiple commands need to be run.

It'll return stderr, stdout, and exit codes as objects. One thing to note: the function won't accept .\ in the path; full paths must be used.

Function Execute-Command ($commandTitle, $commandPath, $commandArguments)
{
    $pinfo = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $pinfo.FileName = $commandPath
    $pinfo.RedirectStandardError = $true
    $pinfo.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
    $pinfo.UseShellExecute = $false
    $pinfo.Arguments = $commandArguments
    $p = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
    $p.StartInfo = $pinfo
    $p.Start() | Out-Null
    $p.WaitForExit()
    [pscustomobject]@{
        commandTitle = $commandTitle
        stdout = $p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()
        stderr = $p.StandardError.ReadToEnd()
        ExitCode = $p.ExitCode
    }
}

Here's how to use it:

$DisableACMonitorTimeOut = Execute-Command -commandTitle "Disable Monitor Timeout" -commandPath "C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe" -commandArguments " -x monitor-timeout-ac 0"

I really had troubles with those examples from Andy Arismendi and from LPG. You should always use:

$stdout = $p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()

before calling

$p.WaitForExit()

A full example is:

$pinfo = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$pinfo.FileName = "ping.exe"
$pinfo.RedirectStandardError = $true
$pinfo.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
$pinfo.UseShellExecute = $false
$pinfo.Arguments = "localhost"
$p = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
$p.StartInfo = $pinfo
$p.Start() | Out-Null
$stdout = $p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()
$stderr = $p.StandardError.ReadToEnd()
$p.WaitForExit()
Write-Host "stdout: $stdout"
Write-Host "stderr: $stderr"
Write-Host "exit code: " + $p.ExitCode