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.
Output may be redirected to a variable or output stream
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 |
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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:
The script outputs