Executing external programs

[Ben]

Hi,

this appears to be a simple problem ... but i can not find any documentation
on this ... could anyone point me to a rescource that would have an answer
to this solution ...

All I want to do is

 run program1.exe -args

 ... when program1.exe is finished

run program2.exe -args ...

run program3.exe -args

etc etc

 ie the next process waits for the preceding processes exit code before
starting ... if I can avoid the overhead of having the command shell open
everytime I run an exe that would be good.

Thanks