Reading console stream continually in c#

Question

I want to read a continues output stream of cmd in c#. I know that I can redirect the standard output stream and read it. Following is the code:

        System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo pi= new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo(ProgramPATH,Params);
        pi.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
        pi.UseShellExecute = false;
        pi.CreateNoWindow = true;

        System.Diagnostics.Process proc= new System.Diagnostics.Process();
        proc.StartInfo = pi;
        proc.Start();

        string result = proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();

But this gives the whole output at once. What if I issue ping command with -t argument? How I can read this stream continually?

Answer 1

You're calling ReadToEnd which will obviously block until the process terminates. You can repeatedly call Read or ReadLine instead. However, you should consider either doing this in a different thread or using events such as OutputDataReceived to do this. (If you're using events, you need to call BeginOutputReadLine to enable the events - see the MSDN examples for details.)

The reason for potentially reading on a different thread is that if you need to read from both standard error and standard output, you need to make sure the process doesn't fill up its buffer - otherwise it could block when writing, effectively leading to deadlock. Using the asynchronous approach makes it simpler to handle this.