I want to make a GUI Windows application that can run console applications. When this happens, the console window should not be shown. Instead its content should be shown in a visual component (memo/richedit). This component should show exactly the same content which would appear in the console window, even the color of the text and its background should be displayed. So this visual component should work exactly as a console window. I know that the standard output can be captured but many console applications do not use it. Is it possible to capture the output of a console application this way? Are there Windows API calls that can handle this?

I use Delphi XE2 but C# code would also be helpful.

CodePudding user response：

You have to run the console mode program with stdout redirection to a pipe that your Delphi program will create. Your Delphi program can read the pipe to get the console mode program output and do whatever it needs to. By the way, this works not only with Delphi but also with any language able to create pipe and run program with I/O redirection.

If you need Delphi code to do that, have a look at this reference.

CodePudding user response：

There is a ready-to-run component on GitHub: DosCommand

The Demo shows two ways how to do what you describe.

I am not sure if it works for older versions like XE2, but at least you can give it a try.

CodePudding user response：

Traditionally you would call CreateProcess with stdin/stdout set to pipes you created. This should work for most programs but not for anything that uses a ncurses style "GUI" and you also lose the color information. An example can be found on MSDN.

Windows 10 (1809?) added support for pseudoconsoles. This is used by the new Terminal application and is your best bet for full console compatibility.

The last alternative is to inject into the child process and hook WriteFile, ReadFile and all the console functions but this is ugly and error-prone.