Question

How can I run the dir command from the Dart VM? When I try to use it with the Process class I get “unhandled exceptions”.

Answer 1

Thanks to Søren Gjesse for the answer, who originally posted this to the Dart mailing list.

You cannot just run dir on Windows as it is not a standalone executable but build into cmd.exe. The following code will run dir and print the result:

import 'dart:io';

void main() {
    Process.run('cmd', ['/c', 'dir']).then((ProcessResult results) {
      print(results.stdout);
    });
}

See also the Dart IO library for more on processes.