For instance, if you had to populate the list of names of computers in your LAN in a combo box, the net.exe command can be utilized with the Process.Start() method in C#
Process netsend = new Process();
netsend.StartInfo.FileName = "net.exe";
netsend.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
netsend.StartInfo.Arguments = "view";
netsend.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
netsend.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
netsend.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
netsend.Start();
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(netsend.StandardOutput.BaseStream, netsend.StandardOutput.CurrentEncoding);
string sss = "";
while ((sss = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (sss.StartsWith("\\"))
comboBox1.Items.Add(sss.Substring(2).Substring(0, sss.Substring(2).IndexOf(" ")).ToUpper();
}
sr.Close();
Setting the CreateNoWindow property to true hides the console window.
Here is a list of command-line tools that I've found helpful (work in progress) -
- bcp - great for importing/exporting data to/from Excel. I was able to able to export over 7 lakh records to a .xls file from SQL Server in just 21 seconds.
- FFmpeg - records, converts and streams digital audio and video in numerous formats.
- pdfsam-console - merges & splits PDF files.
- Tasklist, Taskkill - quick way to kill a process on your system, or kill and restart an ASP.NET or IIS worker process.