Kill child process when parent process is killed

Question

I\'m creating new processes using System.Diagnostics.Process class from my application.

I want this processes to be killed when/if my application has cr

Answer 1

I was looking for a solution to this problem that did not require unmanaged code. I was also not able to use standard input/output redirection because it was a Windows Forms application.

My solution was to create a named pipe in the parent process and then connect the child process to the same pipe. If the parent process exits then the pipe becomes broken and the child can detect this.

Below is an example using two console applications:

Parent

private const string PipeName = "471450d6-70db-49dc-94af-09d3f3eba529";

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Main program running");

    using (NamedPipeServerStream pipe = new NamedPipeServerStream(PipeName, PipeDirection.Out))
    {
        Process.Start("child.exe");

        Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit");
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

Child

private const string PipeName = "471450d6-70db-49dc-94af-09d3f3eba529"; // same as parent

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Child process running");

    using (NamedPipeClientStream pipe = new NamedPipeClientStream(".", PipeName, PipeDirection.In))
    {
        pipe.Connect();
        pipe.BeginRead(new byte[1], 0, 1, PipeBrokenCallback, pipe);

        Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit");
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

private static void PipeBrokenCallback(IAsyncResult ar)
{
    // the pipe was closed (parent process died), so exit the child process too

    try
    {
        NamedPipeClientStream pipe = (NamedPipeClientStream)ar.AsyncState;
        pipe.EndRead(ar);
    }
    catch (IOException) { }

    Environment.Exit(1);
}