How can I keep a console open until CancelKeyPress event is fired?

Question

What is the best way to keep a console application open as long as the CancelKeyPress event has not been fired?

I would prefer to not use Console.Read or Console.Rea

Answer 1

I'm assuming that "gracefully shut down the application" is the part you are struggling with here. Otherwise your application will automatically exit on ctrl-c. You should change the title.

Here's a quick demo of what I think you need. It could be refined a bit more with use of locking and Monitors for notification. I'm not sure exactly what you need though, so I'll just pose this...

class Program
{

    private static volatile bool _s_stop = false;

    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Console.CancelKeyPress += new ConsoleCancelEventHandler(Console_CancelKeyPress);
        while (!_s_stop)
        {
            /* put real logic here */
            Console.WriteLine("still running at {0}", DateTime.Now);
            Thread.Sleep(3000);
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Graceful shut down code here...");

        //don't leave this...  demonstration purposes only...
        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    static void Console_CancelKeyPress(object sender, ConsoleCancelEventArgs e)
    {
        //you have 2 options here, leave e.Cancel set to false and just handle any
        //graceful shutdown that you can while in here, or set a flag to notify the other
        //thread at the next check that it's to shut down.  I'll do the 2nd option
        e.Cancel = true;
        _s_stop = true;
        Console.WriteLine("CancelKeyPress fired...");
    }

}

The _s_stop boolean should be declared volatile or an overly-ambitious optimizer might cause the program to loop infinitely.