What’s the difference between Process
and ProcessStartInfo
? I’ve used both to launch external programs but there has to be a reason there are two ways to do it. Here are two examples.
Process notePad = new Process();notePad.StartInfo.FileName = "notepad.exe";notePad.StartInfo.Arguments = "ProcessStart.cs";notePad.Start();
and
ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();startInfo.FileName = "notepad.exe";startInfo.Arguments = "ProcessStart.cs";Process.Start(startInfo);
Best Answer
They are pretty close to the same, both are from the Process class. And there are actually 4 other overloads to Process.Start other than what you mentioned, all static.
One is a static method way to do it. It returns the Process object representing the process that is started. You could for example start a process with a single line of code by using this way.
And the other is a member method way to do it which reuses the current object instead of returning a new one.
Heh.
If you look closely at your code, you will note that they are both using the same classes. The StartInfo
property in your first example is, unsurprsingly, a ProcessStartInfo
. In your second example, you call the static .Start
method on the Process
class.
So what are the differences? Significant. They're different classes. One is for launching processes, one is for saying which process to launch (and lots of other little things, like capturing output, etc). In the first case, you just use the default ProcessStartInfo
property that the class has.
It seems that ProcessStartInfo
is a subset of Process
if you look at the members of notePad
variable below
Process notePad = new Process();
You will notice that StartInfo has type (or of class) ProcessStartInfo
which is why the two initializations are the samenotePad.StartInfo.FileName = "notepad.exe";
Vs startInfo.FileName = "notepad.exe";
Since Process
is the full class I would think it can do everything ProcessStartInfo
can do plus extra But Don't take my word for it I only less than a year experience in .Net