Is there any way to run "dir" directly?

Invisible Solution (Create a pipe, execute the command, redirect stdout to the pipe, read out the pipe):

function Console(const Command: String): String; var   StartupInfo: TStartupInfo;   ProcessInfo: TProcessInformation;   SecurityAttr: TSecurityAttributes;   OutputPipeRead, OutputPipeWrite: THandle;   Res: Boolean;   BufSize: Cardinal;   Buffer: String;   BytesRead: Cardinal; begin   FillChar(ProcessInfo, SizeOf(TProcessInformation), 0);   FillChar(SecurityAttr, SizeOf(TSecurityAttributes), 0);   SecurityAttr.nLength := SizeOf(SecurityAttr);   SecurityAttr.bInheritHandle := true;   SecurityAttr.lpSecurityDescriptor := nil;   CreatePipe(OutputPipeRead, OutputPipeWrite, @SecurityAttr, 0);   FillChar(StartupInfo, SizeOf(TStartupInfo), 0);   StartupInfo.cb:=SizeOf(StartupInfo);   StartupInfo.hStdInput := 0;   StartupInfo.hStdOutput := OutputPipeWrite;   StartupInfo.hStdError := OutputPipeWrite;   StartupInfo.wShowWindow := SW_HIDE;   StartupInfo.dwFlags := STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW or STARTF_USESTDHANDLES;   Res := CreateProcess(nil, PChar(command), nil, nil, true,                    CREATE_DEFAULT_ERROR_MODE or CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE or                    NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS, nil, nil, StartupInfo, ProcessInfo);   CloseHandle(OutputPipeWrite);   Result := '';   if Res then   begin      SetLength(Buffer, 5000);     BufSize := Length(Buffer);     repeat       Res := ReadFile(OutputPipeRead, Buffer[1], BufSize, BytesRead, nil);       Result := Result + Copy(Buffer, 1, BytesRead);     until not Res;     WaitForSingleObject(ProcessInfo.hProcess, INFINITE);     CloseHandle(ProcessInfo.hProcess);   end;   CloseHandle(OutputPipeRead); end;

Sample Usage:

ShowMessage(Console('cmd /c dir C:\'));

You don't need a batch file, you can just execute:

cmd.exe /c dir

You can check the option to command with cmd /?:

c:> cmd /?CMD [/A | /U] [/Q] [/D] [/E:ON | /E:OFF] [/F:ON | /F:OFF] [/V:ON | /V:OFF]    [[/S] [/C | /K] string]/C  Carries out the command specified by string and then terminates: : : : :

Why not FindFirstFile? It returns an attribute for each item that you can compare with FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY to check for a directory. I highly suspect that dir doesn't do anything else.Using the dir command is like using a bar to type on the keyboard.