I've an application that starts an FTP call with the Shell Command which
sends its output to a file. The Shell command of course returns a Process
Id number. There is probably a way to use this Process Id to figure out
that process is finished, so I can collect the output and go on with the
program. But I don't know how.

One obvious way is to wait for the file that was output to be found by a Dir
command. By that process seems to hang sometimes. So I thought I'd see if
there was a way go figure out if the process was finished directly.

Anyone out there know how to do this?

Thanks,
Mac

"Mac Lingo" wrote in message
et...
I've an application that starts an FTP call with the Shell Command which
sends its output to a file. The Shell command of course returns a Process
Id number. There is probably a way to use this Process Id to figure out
that process is finished, so I can collect the output and go on with the
program. But I don't know how.

One obvious way is to wait for the file that was output to be found by a
Dir command. By that process seems to hang sometimes. So I thought I'd
see if there was a way go figure out if the process was finished directly.

Anyone out there know how to do this?


The easiest way I've found is to create a Windows shell object and execute
its Run method which has a third param that you can use to tell it only to
return to processing when the shelled operation has finished.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d5fk67ky.aspx

Sub test()
Const HIDE_WINDOW As Long = 0
Dim objShell As Object
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
objShell.Run "C:\test.bat", HIDE_WINDOW, True
Set objShell = Nothing
End Sub

HTH

Rob