C++ Executing CMD Commands

Question

I'm having a serious problem here. I need to execute a CMD command line via C++ without the console window displaying. Therefore I cannot use system(cmd), since the window will display.

I have tried winExec(cmd, SW_HIDE), but this does not work either. CreateProcess is another one I tried. However, this is for running programs or batch files.

I have ended up trying ShellExecute:

ShellExecute( NULL, "open",
    "cmd.exe",
    "ipconfig > myfile.txt",
    "c:\projects\b",
    SW_SHOWNORMAL
);

Can anyone see anything wrong with the above code? I have used SW_SHOWNORMAL until I know this works.

I really need some help with this. Nothing has come to light, and I have been trying for quite a while. Any advice anyone could give would be great :)

Answer 1

I have a similar program [windows7 and 10 tested] on github

https://github.com/vlsireddy/remwin/tree/master/remwin

This is server program which

1. listens on "Local Area Connection" named interface in windows for UDP port (5555) and receives udp packet.
2. received udp packet content is executed on cmd.exe [please not cmd.exe is NOT closed after running the command and the output string [the output of the executed command] is fedback to the client program over same udp port].
3. In other words, command received in udp packet -> parsed udp packet -> executed on cmd.exe -> output sent back on same port to client program

This does not show "console window" No need for someone to execute manually command on cmd.exe remwin.exe can be running in background and its a thin server program

Answer 2

Redirecting the output to your own pipe is a tidier solution because it avoids creating the output file, but this works fine:

ShellExecute(0, "open", "cmd.exe", "/C ipconfig > out.txt", 0, SW_HIDE);

You don't see the cmd window and the output is redirected as expected.

Your code is probably failing (apart from the /C thing) because you specify the path as "c:\projects\b" rather than "c:\\projects\\b".

Answer 3

Here is my implementation of a DosExec function that allows to (silently) execute any DOS command and retrieve the generated output as a unicode string.

// Convert an OEM string (8-bit) to a UTF-16 string (16-bit) 
#define OEMtoUNICODE(str)   CHARtoWCHAR(str, CP_OEMCP)

/* Convert a single/multi-byte string to a UTF-16 string (16-bit).
 We take advantage of the MultiByteToWideChar function that allows to specify the charset of the input string.
*/
LPWSTR CHARtoWCHAR(LPSTR str, UINT codePage) {
    size_t len = strlen(str) + 1;
    int size_needed = MultiByteToWideChar(codePage, 0, str, len, NULL, 0);
    LPWSTR wstr = (LPWSTR) LocalAlloc(LPTR, sizeof(WCHAR) * size_needed);
    MultiByteToWideChar(codePage, 0, str, len, wstr, size_needed);
    return wstr;
}

/* Execute a DOS command.

 If the function succeeds, the return value is a non-NULL pointer to the output of the invoked command. 
 Command will produce a 8-bit characters stream using OEM code-page.

 As charset depends on OS config (ex: CP437 [OEM-US/latin-US], CP850 [OEM 850/latin-1]),
 before being returned, output is converted to a wide-char string with function OEMtoUNICODE.

 Resulting buffer is allocated with LocalAlloc.
 It is the caller's responsibility to free the memory used by the argument list when it is no longer needed. 
 To free the memory, use a single call to LocalFree function.
*/
LPWSTR DosExec(LPWSTR command){
    // Allocate 1Mo to store the output (final buffer will be sized to actual output)
    // If output exceeds that size, it will be truncated
    const SIZE_T RESULT_SIZE = sizeof(char)*1024*1024;
    char* output = (char*) LocalAlloc(LPTR, RESULT_SIZE);

    HANDLE readPipe, writePipe;
    SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES security;
    STARTUPINFOA        start;
    PROCESS_INFORMATION processInfo;

    security.nLength = sizeof(SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES);
    security.bInheritHandle = true;
    security.lpSecurityDescriptor = NULL;

    if ( CreatePipe(
                    &readPipe,  // address of variable for read handle
                    &writePipe, // address of variable for write handle
                    &security,  // pointer to security attributes
                    0           // number of bytes reserved for pipe
                    ) ){


        GetStartupInfoA(&start);
        start.hStdOutput  = writePipe;
        start.hStdError   = writePipe;
        start.hStdInput   = readPipe;
        start.dwFlags     = STARTF_USESTDHANDLES + STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW;
        start.wShowWindow = SW_HIDE;

// We have to start the DOS app the same way cmd.exe does (using the current Win32 ANSI code-page).
// So, we use the "ANSI" version of createProcess, to be able to pass a LPSTR (single/multi-byte character string) 
// instead of a LPWSTR (wide-character string) and we use the UNICODEtoANSI function to convert the given command 
        if (CreateProcessA(NULL,                    // pointer to name of executable module
                           UNICODEtoANSI(command),  // pointer to command line string
                           &security,               // pointer to process security attributes
                           &security,               // pointer to thread security attributes
                           TRUE,                    // handle inheritance flag
                           NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,   // creation flags
                           NULL,                    // pointer to new environment block
                           NULL,                    // pointer to current directory name
                           &start,                  // pointer to STARTUPINFO
                           &processInfo             // pointer to PROCESS_INFORMATION
                         )){

            // wait for the child process to start
            for(UINT state = WAIT_TIMEOUT; state == WAIT_TIMEOUT; state = WaitForSingleObject(processInfo.hProcess, 100) );

            DWORD bytesRead = 0, count = 0;
            const int BUFF_SIZE = 1024;
            char* buffer = (char*) malloc(sizeof(char)*BUFF_SIZE+1);
            strcpy(output, "");
            do {                
                DWORD dwAvail = 0;
                if (!PeekNamedPipe(readPipe, NULL, 0, NULL, &dwAvail, NULL)) {
                    // error, the child process might have ended
                    break;
                }
                if (!dwAvail) {
                    // no data available in the pipe
                    break;
                }
                ReadFile(readPipe, buffer, BUFF_SIZE, &bytesRead, NULL);
                buffer[bytesRead] = '\0';
                if((count+bytesRead) > RESULT_SIZE) break;
                strcat(output, buffer);
                count += bytesRead;
            } while (bytesRead >= BUFF_SIZE);
            free(buffer);
        }

    }

    CloseHandle(processInfo.hThread);
    CloseHandle(processInfo.hProcess);
    CloseHandle(writePipe);
    CloseHandle(readPipe);

    // convert result buffer to a wide-character string
    LPWSTR result = OEMtoUNICODE(output);
    LocalFree(output);
    return result;
}

Answer 4

You should use CreateProcess on cmd.exe with the /C parameter to tunnel the ipconfig command. The > does not work per se on the command line. You have to redirect programmatically the stdout.