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Some developers would stream out the console output to a string, and then write a bunch of ugly parse code (even with regular expressions), and get their results that way. For example, let's say you use Subversion for your source control, and you want to search the history log. For the sake of argument, assume there's no friendly C# API or web service call (it's a local desktop app you're calling), and you need to parse command output. (If anyone knows of such an API, please feel free to suggest it in the comments.) You can run a command like "svn log C:\Projects\MyProject", and it will give you back console output like so:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3004 | username1 | 2008-09-26 10:47:19 -0500 (Fri, 26 Sep 2008) | 2 lines
Solved world hunger
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r3000 | username1 | 2008-09-06 14:10:56 -0500 (Sat, 06 Sep 2008) | 2 lines
Invented nuclear fusion
Ok, you can parse all the information there, but it's very error prone. A much better way is if the console app provides an option to write out its output as a single XML string. For example, you can specify the "--xml" parameter in SVN to do just that:
<log>
<logentry
revision="3004">
<author>username1 </author>
<date>2008-09-26 10:47:19 -0500</date>
<msg>
Solved world hunger
</msg>
</logentry>
<logentry
revision="3000 ">
<author>username1 </author>
<date>2008-09-06 14:10:56 -0500</date>
<msg>
Invented nuclear fusion
</msg>
</logentry>
</log>
Obviously, that's much easier for a calling app to parse. If you need to bridge a cross-platform divide such that you can't just provide the backend class libraries, outputting to xml can be an easy fix.
