Capturing binary output from Process.StandardOutput

Solution 1:

Using StandardOutput.BaseStream is the correct approach, but you must not use any other property or method of cmdProcess.StandardOutput. For example, accessing cmdProcess.StandardOutput.EndOfStream will cause the StreamReader for StandardOutput to read part of the stream, removing the data you want to access.

Instead, simply read and parse the data from br (assuming you know how to parse the data, and won't read past the end of stream, or are willing to catch an EndOfStreamException). Alternatively, if you don't know how big the data is, use Stream.CopyTo to copy the entire standard output stream to a new file or memory stream.

Solution 2:

Since you explicitly specified running on Suse linux and mono, you can work around the problem by using native unix calls to create the redirection and read from the stream. Such as:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;
using Mono.Unix;

class Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int reading, writing;
        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.pipe(out reading, out writing);
        int stdout = Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.dup(1);
        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.dup2(writing, 1);
        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.close(writing);

        Process cmdProcess = new Process();
        ProcessStartInfo cmdStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
        cmdStartInfo.FileName = "cat";
        cmdStartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
        cmdStartInfo.Arguments = "test.exe";
        cmdProcess.StartInfo = cmdStartInfo;
        cmdProcess.Start();

        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.dup2(stdout, 1);
        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.close(stdout);

        Stream s = new UnixStream(reading);
        byte[] buf = new byte[1024];
        int bytes = 0;
        int current;
        while((current = s.Read(buf, 0, buf.Length)) > 0)
        {
            bytes += current;
        }
        Mono.Unix.Native.Syscall.close(reading);
        Console.WriteLine("{0} bytes read", bytes);
    }
}

Under unix, file descriptors are inherited by child processes unless marked otherwise (close on exec). So, to redirect stdout of a child, all you need to do is change the file descriptor #1 in the parent process before calling exec. Unix also provides a handy thing called a pipe which is a unidirectional communication channel, with two file descriptors representing the two endpoints. For duplicating file descriptors, you can use dup or dup2 both of which create an equivalent copy of a descriptor, but dup returns a new descriptor allocated by the system and dup2 places the copy in a specific target (closing it if necessary). What the above code does, then:

1. Creates a pipe with endpoints reading and writing
2. Saves a copy of the current stdout descriptor
3. Assigns the pipe's write endpoint to stdout and closes the original
4. Starts the child process so it inherits stdout connected to the write endpoint of the pipe
5. Restores the saved stdout
6. Reads from the reading endpoint of the pipe by wrapping it in a UnixStream

Note, in native code, a process is usually started by a fork+exec pair, so the file descriptors can be modified in the child process itself, but before the new program is loaded. This managed version is not thread-safe as it has to temporarily modify the stdout of the parent process.

Since the code starts the child process without managed redirection, the .NET runtime does not change any descriptors or create any streams. So, the only reader of the child's output will be the user code, which uses a UnixStream to work around the StreamReader's encoding issue,