Execute Command Line With Arguements And Has Standard Output

I'm trying to execute saxon (XSLT command line parser) from VB.NET. From the DOS prompt, I have no problem doing so. However, my VB.NET application seems to refuse to work properly. Here's what I want to execute:

' Works in DOS
saxon -o output.xml input.xml transform.xsl 2>error.txt

Basically, the above command passes an input XML file and XSLT transformation script, defines the output file and sends any errors to standard output into error.txt.

Here's what I am trying to do in VB.NET

' Let's assume all these files are in the execution directory
Dim p as New System.Diagnostics.Process
p.StartInfo.FileName = "saxon.exe"
p.StartInfo.Arguments =" -o output.xml input.xml transform.xsl 2>error.txt"
p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = True
p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = False   ' does this prevent the DOS window from showing?
p.Start

Dim a As String = p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd
MesssageBox.Show(a)     ' always shows null string even when something should be there

Also, the transformation does not occur when the arguements include "2>error.txt." If I remove that from the arguements, the transformation works just fine -- except now I don't have my error log.

What's the proper way to execute a command line application with arguements that send to the standard output?Start Free Trial