Exec

The Exec application was designed to be a small tool that launches a program using the Win32 CreateProcess API. It can optionally wait for a process to finish and also display the program's elapsed time. Exec doesn't have a problem with quoted paths or command-line arguments. Both console and GUI versions are provided.

There are lots of ways to run programs in Windows: The command prompt, the Start->Run dialog, Windows Explorer, etc. However, it's still sometimes useful to be able to customize the way a program runs.

Exec uses the following command-line syntax:

Exec [-c] [-t title] [-s n] [-w [-e]] [-d dir] -- program [arguments [...]]

The -- characters tell Exec to stop processing its own command-line arguments and to consider the rest of the command line as the program it should run.

The program must be an executable. You can specify any command-line arguments to the program, and Exec will pass them along to the program as-is (i.e., Exec is not confused if any of the program's arguments contain quotes).

Exec's command-line options are as follows:

-c instructs Exec to create a new console. This option is only meaningful in Exec.exe when you are running a console program and you want Exec to start it running in a separate console window (as opposed to the current console window). If you intend to run a console program that processes user input, I recommend that you use the -c option.

-t sets the title for a console program. (It doesn't set the window title for GUI programs.) If you're using Exec.exe rather than ExecGUI.exe, the -t option is only meaningful with -c. If the title text contains spaces, enclose it in quotes.

-s configures the initial window state of the program. The numeric values you may use correspond to the Win32 ShowWindow API constants