Being a batch file replacement language, XSharper of course can execute other executable files. And also in a more convenient way than traditional batch files, as output redirection and argument escaping (a major annoyance when writing Windows batch files) is handled w/o hacks and temporary files.
<shell>echo Hello world!</shell>
Output may be redirected to a variable or output stream
<shell >echo This goes to a real console, no redirection</shell> <shell outTo="^out">echo This goes to a redirected output stream!</shell> <shell outTo="^info">echo This goes redirected to info stream!</shell>
By default the output is expected to be text in default encoding (encoding can be changed using encoding attribute). It's also possible to redirect in binary mode, using binary="1" attribute.
There are different modes of command execution, specified via mode attribute:
| comspec | execute cmd /c program |
|---|---|
| batch | save the shell command as a batch file, execute it, and then delete the batch file |
| direct | the first argument is expected to be a name of an executable file |
| shellExecute | use shellExecute, useful for direct opening of Word documents, or printing (specify verb='print') and so on |
| auto | If verb is empty, use comspec otherwise shellexecute |
Exit code may be saved to a variable via exitcodeTo attribute. By default, unless ignoreExitCode attribute is set, exception is thrown if the exit code is non-zero.
XSharper also provides assistance with argument escaping, by automatically escaping arguments with spaces inside with double quotes, and escaping " and other special characters with \ (which works fine with most applications but unfortunately not all as command line parsing in Windows is poorly standardized).
For example, the code below creates a temp batch file, and executes it with parameters, which are automatically escaped as needed. Parameters may be specified via <param> sub-element, which may also accept arrays, as demonstrated in the following example:
<set name="batch">
@echo off
echo args=[%*]
set count=0
:loop
if "%~1"=="" goto end
echo arg[%count%]=%1
set /a count=%count%+1
shift
goto loop
:end
</set>
<shell mode='batch' value="${batch}">
<param>No-spaces</param>
<param>This param is with spaces</param>
<param>This is also with spaces</param>
</shell>
<print />
<!-- Create array of 3 strings -->
<set arr="${=new {'param1', 'param 2', 'param 333' }}"/>
<shell mode='batch'>
${batch}
<param>Non-array</param>
<param switch="/xx">${arr}</param>
</shell>
The script outputs
args=[No-spaces "This param is with spaces" "This is also with spaces"] arg[0]=No-spaces arg[1]="This param is with spaces" arg[2]="This is also with spaces" args=[Non-array /xx param1 "param 2" "param 333"] arg[0]=Non-array arg[1]=/xx arg[2]=param1 arg[3]="param 2" arg[4]="param 333"