Is it possible to build a Console app that does not display a console Window when double-clicked?

See stackoverflow.com/questions/510805/can-a... Or I think the official way is to check the parent process is cmd. Exe or explorer.exe.

So, I've written tools with both a GUI and a CLI. The hard part was figuring out which one to open - in our case, though, the CLI version had required parameters, so I just opened the GUI if there weren't any parameters. Then, if they did want a console, call a function that looks something like: private const int ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS = -1; private const int ERROR_INVALID_HANDLE = 6; DllImport("kernel32.

Dll", SetLastError = true) static extern bool AttachConsole(int dwProcessId); DllImport("kernel32. Dll") static extern bool AllocConsole(); DllImport("kernel32. Dll") static extern bool FreeConsole(); private static bool StartConsole() { if (!AttachConsole(ATTACH_PARENT_PROCESS)) // try connecting to an existing console { if (Marshal.

GetLastWin32Error() == ERROR_INVALID_HANDLE) // we don't have a console yet { if (!AllocConsole()) // couldn't create a new console, either return false; } else return false; // some other error } return true; } Returns whether the console was created. Don't forget to FreeConsole() when you're done! In our case, of course, if we don't create a console, we create a GUI.It'd be just as easy to create either a console or no UI, though.

EDIT: That totally didn't answer the question in the edit that wasn't there when I started writing that, of course. Other than that our hack was just checking whether it was called with command-line parameters or not.

This is helpful - it lets me create a console app or not at runtime. The key thing is, how to determine whether a console is present. I think that is AttachConsole(-1), but even when that returns 0, I don't know how to suppress the console when it is not present.

I'll have to try a few things. Thanks – Cheeso Oct 6 '09 at 22:01.

Just build it as a Windows Forms app, but don't give it a GUI. Unfortunately then you won't get any console output when it's run from the command line either... is that a problem?

Hmm, I know how to work around that. Thanks! – Cheeso Oct 6 '09 at 21:24 Thinking about this a little more, I don't think this will work.

I know how to make an EXE either a console app or a WinForms app at runtime, using pinvoke on AttachConsole(). But I don't know how to determine when to make it a console app or a Winforms app. I don't know how to detect if it was lauched by a double-click in explorer, or launched from a console window.

– Cheeso Oct 6 '09 at 21:44 Why not use a command line argument to select console display mode? That way when run from Explorer, it won't have one; unless you create a shortcut and add the argument there - allowing you to have both with and without console launches from Explorer. – Clifford Oct 6 '09 at 21:52 That doesn't quite do it for me.

First because I don't want the behavior to be command-line selectable. I want it to be automatic. Second because using the parent's console isn't the same as being a regular console app.

See the blog post from Old New Thing blogs.msdn. Com/oldnewthing/archive/2009/01/01/9259142. Aspx for an explanation of why.

– Cheeso Oct 6 '09 at 0:03.

It would still show up in the Task Manager Processes list.

I have this same problem to solve.. I need a blocking program (so a console application not a windows app). I don't want to use AttachConsole. Using ShoWindow to hide the console if invoked by windows, works.

But it shows the console for a split second... I need to avoid that completely. Usually this is done in the COMPILER/LINKER. There MUST be a way out of this.

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