Launch another application from within C# Winforms application

[GrantS]

Hi
I am trying to use ShellExecute to launch an application to display a
certain file.

The variation on the theme is that I need to be able to specify the
application to launch and not simply pass the file name (which will
then result in the application associated with the file extension to
launch). I want to prevent the application registered in the system as
being associated with the file extension from opeing the file.

For instance, if MSPaint is associated with "*.bmp" file on my system
but I want to programatically open a file (also having a "*.bmp"
extension) with, say, Photoshop, how can I achieve this?

So far, I am using:

System.Diagnost ics.Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo.Red irectStandardOu tput=false;
p.StartInfo.Fil eName=fileToLau nch;
p.StartInfo.Use ShellExecute=fa lse;
p.Start();
p.WaitForExit() ;
p.Dispose();

But this does not permit me to nominate the application I wish to use
to display the file.

Hope someone can assist.

Thanks

Grant

[Rakesh Rajan]

Hi,

If you know the application exe name (and in some cases the path) you need
to launch, then it's usually only a case of passing the document to be opened
as an argument to ProcessInfo.
For eg:
ProcessStartInf o procInfo=new ProcessStartInf o("notepad", "c:\\a.txt" );

Is this what you are looking for?

HTH,
Rakesh Rajan

"GrantS" wrote:

Hi
I am trying to use ShellExecute to launch an application to display a
certain file.

The variation on the theme is that I need to be able to specify the
application to launch and not simply pass the file name (which will
then result in the application associated with the file extension to
launch). I want to prevent the application registered in the system as
being associated with the file extension from opeing the file.

For instance, if MSPaint is associated with "*.bmp" file on my system
but I want to programatically open a file (also having a "*.bmp"
extension) with, say, Photoshop, how can I achieve this?

So far, I am using:

System.Diagnost ics.Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo.Red irectStandardOu tput=false;
p.StartInfo.Fil eName=fileToLau nch;
p.StartInfo.Use ShellExecute=fa lse;
p.Start();
p.WaitForExit() ;
p.Dispose();

But this does not permit me to nominate the application I wish to use
to display the file.

Hope someone can assist.

Thanks

Grant

[GrantS]

Excellent Rakesh

Thanks for your pointer, I will play with this.

Grant

su************* @hotmail.com (GrantS) wrote in message news:<69******* *************** ****@posting.go ogle.com>...

Hi
I am trying to use ShellExecute to launch an application to display a
certain file.

The variation on the theme is that I need to be able to specify the
application to launch and not simply pass the file name (which will
then result in the application associated with the file extension to
launch). I want to prevent the application registered in the system as
being associated with the file extension from opeing the file.

For instance, if MSPaint is associated with "*.bmp" file on my system
but I want to programatically open a file (also having a "*.bmp"
extension) with, say, Photoshop, how can I achieve this?

So far, I am using:

System.Diagnost ics.Process p = new Process();
p.StartInfo.Red irectStandardOu tput=false;
p.StartInfo.Fil eName=fileToLau nch;
p.StartInfo.Use ShellExecute=fa lse;
p.Start();
p.WaitForExit() ;
p.Dispose();

But this does not permit me to nominate the application I wish to use
to display the file.

Hope someone can assist.

Thanks

Grant

[deko]

> If you know the application exe name (and in some cases the path) you need

to launch, then it's usually only a case of passing the document to be opened as an argument to ProcessInfo.
For eg:
ProcessStartInf o procInfo=new ProcessStartInf o("notepad", "c:\\a.txt" );

I want to let users view an XML log file with notepad, so I tried something
almost identical to your example:

System.Diagnost ics.ProcessStar tInfo notepadLog = new
System.Diagnost ics.ProcessStar tInfo("notepad. exe", "c:\\myLogFile. xml")

But nothing happens - am I missing something? .. do I need something like:

Application.Run (notpadLog) ?

[John M Deal]

Try this:

System.Diagnost ics.Process.Sta rt("notepad.exe ", "C:\\myLogFile. xml");

That should launch the application for you and return Process object for
you to work with. Then again you can also pass your ProcessStartInf o
object to the Start method (it has a few overloads). Hope that helps.

Have A Better One!

John M Deal, MCP
Necessity Software

deko wrote:

If you know the application exe name (and in some cases the path) you need
to launch, then it's usually only a case of passing the document to be

opened

as an argument to ProcessInfo.
For eg:
ProcessStartI nfo procInfo=new ProcessStartInf o("notepad", "c:\\a.txt" );

I want to let users view an XML log file with notepad, so I tried something
almost identical to your example:

System.Diagnost ics.ProcessStar tInfo notepadLog = new
System.Diagnost ics.ProcessStar tInfo("notepad. exe", "c:\\myLogFile. xml")

But nothing happens - am I missing something? .. do I need something like:

Application.Run (notpadLog) ?

[deko]

> System.Diagnost ics.Process.Sta rt("notepad.exe ", "C:\\myLogFile. xml");

That should launch the application for you and return Process object for
you to work with. Then again you can also pass your ProcessStartInf o
object to the Start method (it has a few overloads). Hope that helps.

That works great! Thanks!

I also tried:

System.Diagnost ics.ProcessStar tInfo notepadLog = new
System.Diagnost ics.ProcessStar tInfo("notepad. exe", "c:\\myLogFile. xml");

System.Diagnost ics.Process.Sta rt(notepadLog);

That works, too - but requires more typing...