In part 3 of our mini-series about running console applications in PowerShell, here is a goodie: how can you run a console application separately from PowerShell, and still get notified when it is done, and retrieve its exit code?
Here is how: the code below runs ping.exe in a separate (hidden) window. PowerShell continues and is free to do whatever it wants. In the example, it outputs a number of “dot” characters while ping.exe is busy pinging a hostname.
Once the exe is done, the code retrieves the process ExitCode information:
$hostname = 'powershellmagazine.com' # run the console-based application ASYNCHRONOUSLY in its own # window (PowerShell continues) and return the # process object (-PassThru) # Hide the new window (you can also show it if you want) $process = Start-Process -FilePath ping -ArgumentList "$hostname -n 4 -w 2000" -WindowStyle Hidden -PassThru # wait for the process to complete, and meanwhile # display some dots to indicate progress: do { Write-Host '.' -NoNewline Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 300 } until ($process.HasExited) Write-Host # the Error Level information is then found in ExitCode: $IsOnline = $process.ExitCode -eq 0 $IsOnline
