Cannot read output of processes launched under cmd.exe pipe - c++

Question

I hope your programming is going well.
I have a question that I hope asserts an easy answer due to my lack of knowledge.
I've used this code from this question - CreateProcess cmd.exe read/write pipes deadlock
And everything works well.
The problem is when I run other commands from the cmd.exe shell that require interactivity, for example, python or powershell, I get the initial output then nothing gets written to the pipe.
So this is what my input/output looks like:
static PCSTR commands[] = { "powershell\r\n", "dir\r\n", "help\r\n"};
ULONG n = RTL_NUMBER_OF(commands);
PCSTR* psz = commands;
do
{
if (MessageBoxW(0,0, L"force close ?", MB_YESNO) == IDYES)
{
DisconnectNamedPipe(hFile);
break;
}
if (p = new U_IRP(&obj))
{
PCSTR command = *psz++;
p->Write(command, (ULONG)strlen(command) * sizeof(CHAR));
p->Release();
}
} while (--n)
When the code runs, I get the initial powershell.exe prompt as so
PS C:\Users>
But after that nothing gets written to the pipe.
The code is using CreateProcess(... "cmd.exe" ...) and I have tried changing it from "cmd.exe" to "cmd.exe /c" and "cmd.exe /k", neither of which work.
Perhaps you would know what I need to do read/write output to interpreted such as python or powershell from a CreateProcess() induced pipe? Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

you exec cmd.exe and send command to it via pipe to exec powershell. then all depended from powershell implementation
on window7:
powershell use ReadConsoleW for got input. so it not use you named pipe - not read from it. and you can note that console window become interactive after you exec powershell. so powershell not accept what you write to pipe (it simply not read from it at all) but read user input from screen. however after you manually input some command to console and press enter - you can got pipe output - powershell use (mix) both - WriteFile and WriteConsoleW for output. some information output via WriteFile and some via WriteConsoleW
on windows10:
powershell use ReadFile for got input. and WriteFile for output. so it read you commands from pipe and write results to it. and all perfect worked. also you can note that console window is inactive in this case - you can not enter any text to it (unlike win7)
so with code all absolute ok. problem only in how 3-rd program read and write data. if it not read from your pipe - you nothing can do here