c# - Async process start and wait for it to finish

Question

I am new to the thread model in .net. What would you use to:

1. start a process that handles a file (process.StartInfo.FileName = fileName;)
2. wait for the user to close the process OR abandon the thread after some time
3. if the user closed the process, delete the file

Starting the process and waiting should be done on a different thread than the main thread, because this operation should not affect the application.

Example:

My application produces an html report. The user can right click somewhere and say "View Report" - now I retrieve the report contents in a temporary file and launch the process that handles html files i.e. the default browser. The problem is that I cannot cleanup, i.e. delete the temp file.

Answer 1

"and waiting must be async" - I'm not trying to be funny, but isn't that a contradiction in terms? However, since you are starting a Process, the Exited event may help:

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = null;
Process process = Process.Start(startInfo);
process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
process.Exited += delegate {/* clean up*/};

If you want to actually wait (timeout etc), then:

if(process.WaitForExit(timeout)) {
    // user exited
} else {
    // timeout (perhaps process.Kill();)
} 

For waiting async, perhaps just use a different thread?

ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(delegate {
    Process process = Process.Start(startInfo);
    if(process.WaitForExit(timeout)) {
        // user exited
    } else {
        // timeout
    }
});