Calling a windows executable (.exe) from ColdFusion app

I have no experience with ColdFusion, but I'd like to find out if it's possible to call a windows .exe file from a ColdFusion app (assuming the app and the .exe are running on the same machine) and then use the response from the .exe to pass to another method in the ColdFusion app开发者_StackOverflow中文版 (or for simplicity's sake just display the response in an alert window).

You can run exe's by using cfexecute.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/help.html?content=Tags_d-e_18.html

You can store the output from the exe into a variable and then pass that to another programme using another cfexecute.

cfexecute is pretty limited. For instance it does not output any error text.

An alternative is to use the JAVA runtime exec method. Here is some more comprehensive information of it's use in regard to Coldfusion.

http://blog.stannard.net.au/2007/9/21/executing-system-commands-with-coldfusion/

It can be tricky though.