Question

I’d like to use C# to execute a shell script.
Based on similar questions I came to a solution that looks like this.

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app","sunflow/sunflow.sh");

It currently opens Terminal, then opens the shell file with the default application (Xcode in my case). Changing the default application is not an option, since this app will need to be installed for other users.

Ideally the solution will allow for arguments for the shell file.

Answer 1

I can’t test with a Mac right now, but the following code works on Linux and should work on a Mac because Mono hews pretty closely to Microsoft’s core .NET interfaces:

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo()
{
    FileName = "foo/bar.sh",
    Arguments = "arg1 arg2 arg3",
};
Process proc = new Process()
{
    StartInfo = startInfo,
};
proc.Start();

A few notes about my environment:

• I created a test directory specifically to double-check this code.

• I created a file bar.sh in subdirectory foo, with the following code:

  #!/bin/sh
  for arg in $*
  do
      echo $arg
  done
  

• I wrapped a Main method around the C# code above in Test.cs, and compiled with dmcs Test.cs, and executed with mono Test.exe.

• The final output is “arg1 arg2 arg3”, with the three tokens separated by newlines