Question

If you want to start another process and wait (with time out) to finish you can use the following (from MSDN).

//Set a time-out value.
int timeOut=5000;
//Get path to system folder.
string sysFolder= 
    Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.System);
//Create a new process info structure.
ProcessStartInfo pInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
//Set file name to open.
pInfo.FileName = sysFolder + @"\eula.txt";
//Start the process.
Process p = Process.Start(pInfo);
//Wait for window to finish loading.
p.WaitForInputIdle();
//Wait for the process to exit or time out.
p.WaitForExit(timeOut);
//Check to see if the process is still running.
if (p.HasExited == false)
    //Process is still running.
    //Test to see if the process is hung up.
    if (p.Responding)
        //Process was responding; close the main window.
        p.CloseMainWindow();
    else
        //Process was not responding; force the process to close.
        p.Kill();

MessageBox.Show("Code continuing...");

If you want to start another process and read its output then you can use the following pattern (from SO)

// Start the child process.
Process p = new Process();
// Redirect the output stream of the child process.
p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
p.StartInfo.FileName = "Write500Lines.exe";
p.Start();
// Do not wait for the child process to exit before
// reading to the end of its redirected stream.
// p.WaitForExit();
// Read the output stream first and then wait.
string output = p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
p.WaitForExit();

How can you combine the two to read all input, not get stuck in deadlock and have a timeout if the running process goes awry?

Answer 1

This technique will hang if the output buffer is filled with more that 4KB of data. A more foolproof method is to register delegates to be notified when something is written to the output stream. I’ve already suggested this method before in another post:

ProcessStartInfo processInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("Write500Lines.exe");
processInfo.ErrorDialog = false;
processInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
processInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
processInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;

Process proc = Process.Start(processInfo);

// You can pass any delegate that matches the appropriate 
// signature to ErrorDataReceived and OutputDataReceived
proc.ErrorDataReceived += (sender, errorLine) => { if (errorLine.Data != null) Trace.WriteLine(errorLine.Data); };
proc.OutputDataReceived += (sender, outputLine) => { if (outputLine.Data != null) Trace.WriteLine(outputLine.Data); };
proc.BeginErrorReadLine();
proc.BeginOutputReadLine();

proc.WaitForExit();