Shell Command

Article
11/15/2016

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2015. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Launches executable programs from within Visual Studio.

Syntax

Tools.Shell [/command] [/output] [/dir:folder] path [args]

Arguments

path Required. The path and file name of the file to execute or the document to open. A full path is required if the specified file is not in one of the directories in the PATH environment variable.

args Optional. Any arguments to pass to the invoked program.

Switches

/commandwindow [or] /command [or] /c [or] /cmd Optional. Specifies that the output for the executable is displayed in the Command window.

/dir:folder [or] /d: folder Optional. Specifies the working directory to be set when the program is run.

/outputwindow [or] /output [or] /out [or] /o Optional. Specifies that the output for the executable is displayed in the Output window.

Remarks

The /dir /o /c switches must be specified immediately after Tools.Shell. Anything specified after the name of the executable is passed to it as command line arguments.

The predefined alias Shell can be used in place of Tools.Shell.

Caution

If the path argument supplies the directory path as well as the file name, you should enclose the entire pathname in literal quotes ("""), as in the following:

Tools.Shell """C:\Program Files\SomeFile.exe"""

Each set of three double quotes (""") is interpreted by the Shell processor as a single double quote character. Thus, the preceding example actually passes the following path string to the Shell command:

"C:\Program Files\SomeFile.exe"

Caution

If you do not enclose the path string in literal quotes ("""), Windows will use only the portion of the string up to the first space. For example, if the path string above were not quoted properly, Windows would look for a file named "Program" located in the C:\ root directory. If a C:\Program.exe executable file were actually available, even one installed by illicit tampering, Windows would attempt to execute that program in place of the desired "c:\Program Files\SomeFile.exe" program.

Example

The following command uses xcopy.exe to copy the file MyText.txt into the Text folder. The output from xcopy.exe is displayed in both the Command Window and the Output window.

>Tools.Shell /o /c xcopy.exe c:\MyText.txt c:\Text\MyText.txt

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