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I have a windows forms application and i want to open a console on demand (when i press a button for example) that i can interact with using the standard Console class. Is there a way to do this?

Adrian Zanescu
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2 Answers2

6

Yes there is you'll need a litte bit on interop with Win32 to do it. 

public class ConsoleHelper
{
    public static int Create()
    {
        if (AllocConsole())
            return 0;
        else
            return Marshal.GetLastWin32Error();
    }

    public static int Destroy()
    {
        if (FreeConsole())
            return 0;
        else
            return Marshal.GetLastWin32Error();
    }

    [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Security", "CA2118:ReviewSuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurityUsage"), SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity]
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
    static extern bool AllocConsole();


    [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Security", "CA2118:ReviewSuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurityUsage"), SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity]
    [DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
    static extern bool FreeConsole();
}

Now you can call Create() to create console window associated with your app.

Paolo
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    thanks. it worked. now i have another problem. if the spawned console is closed my whole application goes down. Is there a way to prevent that? – Adrian Zanescu Dec 23 '09 at 15:39
  • Not easily. You could try disabling the close functionality using the techniques in this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/877839/stop-a-net-console-app-from-being-closed/878334#878334 – Paolo Dec 23 '09 at 16:07
0

Checkout Eric Petroelje's answer here. It shows code that can create a console at runtime.

Community
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Brian Ensink
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