Question

I want to create a LaTeX editor to produce pdf documents.
Behind the scene, my application uses pdflatex.exe executed through a Process instance.

pdflatex.exe needs an input file, e.g., input.tex as follows

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
\LaTeX\ is my tool.
\end{document}

For the sake of simplicity, here is the minimal c# codes used in my LaTeX editor:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Process p = new Process();

            p.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
            p.Exited += new EventHandler(p_Exited);

            p.StartInfo.Arguments = "input.tex";
            p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            p.StartInfo.FileName = "pdflatex.exe";

            p.Start();
            p.WaitForExit();
        }

        static void p_Exited(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // remove all auxiliary files, excluding *.pdf.
        }
    }
}

The question is

How to detect the pdflatex.exe whether it stops working due to an invalid input?

Edit

This is the final working solution:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Process p = new Process();

            p.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
            p.Exited += new EventHandler(p_Exited);

            p.StartInfo.Arguments = "-interaction=nonstopmode input.tex";// Edit
            p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            p.StartInfo.FileName = "pdflatex.exe";
            p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
            p.Start();
            p.WaitForExit();

            //Edit
            if (p.ExitCode == 0)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Succeeded...");
            }
            else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Failed...");
            }
        }

        static void p_Exited(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // remove all  files excluding *.pdf

            //Edit
            Console.WriteLine("exited...");
        }
    }
}

The idea using -interaction=nonstopmode belongs to @Martin here.

Answer 1

Most command-line applications set an exit code to indicate success or failure. You test it thus:

p.WaitForExit();
if (p.ExitCode == 0) {
    // Success
} else {
    // Failure
}