I'm firing off a Java application from inside of a C# .NET console application. It works fine for the case where the Java application doesn't care what the "default" directory is, but fails for a Java application that only searches the current directory for support files.
Is there a process parameter that can be set to specify the default directory that a process is started in?
Yes! ProcessStartInfo Has a property called WorkingDirectory, just use:
...
using System.Diagnostics;
...
var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.WorkingDirectory = // working directory
// set additional properties
Process proc = Process.Start(startInfo);
Use the ProcessStartInfo.WorkingDirectory property to set it prior to starting the process. If the property is not set, the default working directory is %SYSTEMROOT%\system32.
You can determine the value of %SYSTEMROOT% by using:
string _systemRoot = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("SYSTEMROOT");
Here is some sample code that opens Notepad.exe with a working directory of %ProgramFiles%:
...
using System.Diagnostics;
...
ProcessStartInfo _processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
_processStartInfo.WorkingDirectory = @"%ProgramFiles%";
_processStartInfo.FileName = @"Notepad.exe";
_processStartInfo.Arguments = "test.txt";
_processStartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
Process myProcess = Process.Start(_processStartInfo);
There is also an Environment variable that controls the current working directory for your process that you can access directly through the Environment.CurrentDirectory property .
The Process.Start method has an overload that takes an instance of ProcessStartInfo. This class has a property called "WorkingDirectory".
Set that property to the folder you want to use and that should make it start up in the correct folder.