Start-Process: allow redirecting std output/error to console stream

Summary of the new feature / enhancement

Hello. I am trying to start a process in a new window with Start-Process and i’m -waiting for its execution.

Then i need to process its output. I would like to do it all in memory, without writing to disk, as the output is confidential. Unfortunately at the moment this doesn’t seem to be possible (correct me if i’m wrong) without resorting to .NET implementations like this…

Currently, this is the best you can do:

$output = & {start-process powershell "read-host 'Enter string: '" -Wait -RedirectStandardOutput output.txt ; get-content output.txt}

In this example,

• powershell "read-host 'Enter string: '" is my command with confidential output.
• -Wait waits for my command to exit
• -RedirectStandardOutput permits the redirection to a file
• get-content simply reads back that file.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

A possible solution would be a parameter like -RedirectStandardOutputToStream / -RedirectStandardErrorToStream

$output = & {start-process powershell "read-host 'Enter string: '" -wait -RedirectStandardOutputToStream 1}

Where 1 is the ID of the success stream.

---

Or, more simply:

$output = & {start-process powershell "read-host 'Enter string: '" -wait -GetStandardOutput}

… with the corresponding -GetStandardError

[jborean93]

That doesn’t really help here for Start-Process if I understand it correctly? You can already capture output with just invoking the exe today. Supporting Start-Process redirection to a var would be quite tricky unless it meant -Wait was always implicit as it would require a background task to be running which could mutate the var as it’s being read.

[aetonsi]

@mklement0 Mmh i see, that would be cool. Not the same as what i was picturing (-RedirectStandardOutputToStream 1 would print to the success stream, and you could capture it in a variable)… but ultimately that’s what i would like to end up to do: save the output to a variable to reuse it.