Develop Reference

Why does the output of my shell script doesn't print in console?

I am trying to print the output of a shell script on the console using java. When I manually run the script, I get
C:/Users/user1/Desktop/shell.sh: line 78: /usr/ucb/ps: No such file or directory
<STATUS>: Probe [ devicename ] is not running!
But, when I try to run it on my Java program, the output is not being printed on the console.
My code is:
ProcessBuilder processBuilder = new ProcessBuilder("C:/Program Files/Git/git-bash.exe","C:/Users/user1/Desktop/shell.sh");
try {
Process process = processBuilder.start();
StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()));
String line;
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
output.append(line + "\n");
System.out.println(line);
}
int exitVal = process.waitFor();
if (exitVal == 0) {
System.out.println("Success!");
System.out.println(output);
System.exit(0);
} else {
//abnormal...
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
The only output I am getting is "Success". When I debugged my code, I found that the code never enters the condition
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null)
even though, in the bash terminal, there are lines of output. Why is this happening?
I am stuck at this point and I couldn't find any other explanations for this problem. Kindly help.

You are running git-bash.exe which opens as a windows application. Although Java has access to the stdout/stderr streams of git-bash.exe, these are not necessarily the same as the stdout/err of the internal launch of your shell script within git-bash.exe.
One way to see the stdout/err of your command would be to make a java friendly version of the .sh script which launches your original sh and redirects output to a specific files which you can then access within java afterwards.
ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("C:/Program Files/Git/GIT-BASH.EXE","/c/Users/blah/somescript.sh");
somescript.sh:
#!/bin/sh
runtheoriginalcommand > ~/somepath.out 2> ~/somepath.err
You could also add extra args to wrapper to pass the out/err files to be used so there is no contention with any other launches or hardcoded output files.

How to find the list of only application running in windows?

I want to find the list of all application running in windows.The list should consist of application only and not all process
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec
(System.getenv("windir") +"\\system32\\"+"tasklist.exe");
try (BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()))) {
while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line); //<-- Parse data here.
}
}

An application is a program which you interact with on the desktop. This is what you spend almost all of your time using on the computer. Internet explorer, microsoft word, iTunes, skype - they are all applications.
A process is an instance of a particular executable (.exe program file) running. A given application may have several processes running simultaneously. For example, some modern browsers such as google chrome run several processes at once, with each tab actually being a separate instance/process of the same executable.
So, what you could do is:
try {
String line;
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(System.getenv("windir") +"\\system32\\"+"tasklist.exe");
BufferedReader input =
new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
//<-- Parse the line and insert into a set using image field as a key
}
input.close();
} catch (Exception err) {
err.printStackTrace();
} // do not forget to handle exceptions!
you will need some filtering though, for example inserting the result of the tasklist command into a Set by the name in the 'image' column because they are all associated with the same app:

Shell command not executed

I have a weird problem when trying to execute a shell command from within a java program. Since there exist thousands of websites that explain how to do it I used the following recommended code:
public String executeShellCommand (String command)
{
try
{
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
String line = "";
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
p.getInputStream()));
while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null)
sb.append(line + "\n");
p.waitFor();
return sb.toString();
}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
Acutally, when I try to execute for instance ls -aF is works fine and I get some output as a result. Therefore I'm pretty sure that the above code is, in principal, correct. However, I got another program I'd like to run and that produces a file as an output. I would like to execute it the above way but it never is executed and no output file is generated. Also I do not get any error, warnings or whatsoever in java. When copy and pasting the actual command argument string into the console the execution of the programm/command directly in the shell works fine and the output file is generated. So the command I pass to the method is also correct.
Are there additional things I need to pay attention to when trying to execute a shell command from within java?
UPDATE: I modified my code according to the suggestions. However, it is still hanging:
public String executeShellCommand(List<String> command, String logfile, boolean waitForProcess) { try {
ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder(command);
System.out.println("pb.toString() = " + pb.toString());
Process p = pb.start();
System.out.println("2");
BufferedReader err = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getErrorStream()));
BufferedReader out = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getInputStream()));
System.out.println("3");
StringBuilder errSb = new StringBuilder();
StringBuilder outSb = new StringBuilder();
String line;
System.out.println("4");
while ((line = err.readLine()) != null) { // <--- code hangs here
errSb.append(line + "\n");
System.out.println("errSb = " + errSb.toString());
}
System.out.println("4a");
while ((line = out.readLine()) != null) {
outSb.append(line + "\n");
System.out.println("outSb = " + outSb.toString());
}
System.out.println("5");
if(waitForProcess) {
System.out.println("Wait for process");
p.waitFor();
} else {
System.out.println("Sleep 5000");
Thread.sleep(5000);
}
System.out.println("6");
//Log result to file
if(logfile != null) {
OutputStreamWriter outWriter = new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(logfile));
outWriter.write(errSb.toString());
outWriter.close();
}
return errSb.toString();
} catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return null; }

This will block if your command writes too many characters to stderr. Like for sdtout, Java redirect stderr through a pipe, and if you do not read the pipe, it can fill up and block (size of the pipe is probably less than 256 bytes). To avoid that, you need to read from the Process.getErrorStream(), preferable from another thread as the main thread is busy reading from the Process.getInputStream().
A simpler way to avoid that is to use the ProcessBuilder class instead of Runtime.exec() and ProcessBuilder.redirectErrorStream(true) so that both stdout and stderr are merged into the Process.getInputStream()

As per Process javadoc :
Because some native platforms only provide limited buffer size for standard input and output streams, failure to promptly write the input stream or read the output stream of the subprocess may cause the subprocess to block, or even deadlock.
You are calling p.waitFor(). If we carefully read the waitFor() documentation:
Causes the current thread to wait, if necessary, until the process represented by this Process object has terminated.
You are waiting for a process which hangs, because its error stream and output stream are never read.
What you should do, is to read these streams:
p.start();
BufferedReader err= new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getErrorStream()));
BufferedReader out = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(p.getOutputStream()));
StringBuilder errSb = new StringBuilder();
StringBuilder outSb = new Stringbuilder();
String line;
while ((line = err.readLine()) != null) {
errSb.append(line);
}
while ((line = out.readLine()) != null) {
outSB.append(line);
}
int retCode = p.waitFor(); //0 for success
System.out.println(retCode);
System.err.println(errSB.toString());
You should always read the error stream when calling external programs via the Process class, else you may find yourself in this odd situation where a process hangs forever. (well until someone else -the operating system, another application, etc- kills it, more exactly).
I've also noticed that you use the Runtime.getRuntime() which is not the recommended way to run external programs, starting with java 1.5, as per javadoc:
As of 1.5, ProcessBuilder.start() is the preferred way to create a Process.
ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("ls" , "-aF");
Process p = pb.start();

Control a command line program session via Java

I have a computer algebra program (called Reduce) that works in the shell in an interactive manner: launch Reduce in the shell, then you can define variables, compute this and that, and what not. Reduce prints the output into the shell. My idea is that I want to build a frontend for this text-based program that evaluates its output and converts it into a nice LaTeX style formula. For this I want to use Java.
I can start Reduce via exec(). But how can I emulate text input to the opened shell, and how can I read back what Reduce writes into the shell?
Thanks
Jens
Edit 1: Current Code
// get the shell
Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
// execute reduce
String[] commands = {"D:/Programme/Reduce/reduce.com", "", ""};
Process proc = null;
try {
proc = rt.exec(commands);
} catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println("Error!\n");
}
// get the associated input / output / error streams
BufferedReader stdInput = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(proc.getInputStream()));
BufferedWriter stdOutput = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(proc.getOutputStream()));
BufferedReader stdError = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(proc.getErrorStream()));
// read the output from the command
System.out.println("Here is the standard output of the command:\n");
String s = null;
try {
while ((s = stdInput.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(s);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
}
// read any errors from the attempted command
System.out.println("Here is the standard error of the command (if any):\n");
try {
while ((s = stdError.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(s);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
}

You need to get the streams associated with the process including the InputStream, OutputStream, and ErrorStream. You then can send messages to the process via the OutputStream and then read info from the process via the InputStream and the ErrorStream.
From some code of mine:
final ProcessBuilder pBuilder = new ProcessBuilder(TEST_PROCESS_ARRAY);
final Process proc = pBuilder.start();
procInputStream = proc.getInputStream();
errorStream = proc.getErrorStream();
errorSBuffer = new StringBuffer();
streamGobblerSb = new StreamGobblerSb(errorStream, "Autoit Error", errorSBuffer);
new Thread(streamGobblerSb).start();
final Scanner scan = new Scanner(procInputStream);

You may want to look into using the Process class.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Process.html
I believe you may be able to start the process, and then use getOutputStream() to feed commands into the process.

While this is not strictly an answer, I discovered that it is more convenient for me to stick with PHP's function proc_open(). That way I can include the output directly in the frontend and do not need to worry about the communication between my Java program and the html frontend.
For everybody who wants to stick to the Java method: the article http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-2000/jw-1229-traps.html is a good reference.

Reading from standard input using java.io.InputStreamReader hangs when process runs in background

I'm writing a Java program with multiple threads. One of the threads is responsible for reading lines from the standard input and parsing them.
Everything works well when running normally, but when the program is run in the background (in Linux) using:
$ java -jar my_jar_file &
my program hangs (at least until brought to foreground).
When running in the background I don't really need the standard input, but I also don't want my program to hang.
I searched for a way to programatically determine if the process is running in the background but could not find it.
Here's the code that reads from standard input:
InputStreamReader inputStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(inputStreamReader);
String line = null;
try {
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
parseInputLine(line, br);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
As far as I can tell, the program hangs when it reaches the br.readLine() command.

I would guess the reader is blocking waiting for input you might be able to pipe in your input from the command line

readLine is a blocking call. So it is obviously waiting for input. If you want it to run in the background, then pass to it input from a file like this
java TakeInput < test.txt &
This where the class is as below and test.txt also shown below:
public class TakeInput
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
InputStreamReader inputStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(inputStreamReader);
String line = null;
try {
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(line);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
write a text file as test.txt which has say
test1
test2
test3

I don't believe a Java program can determine if it's running in foreground or background.
I tried System.console(), with the following results:
Linux - returns null if stdin is redirected from a file, independent of foreground/background status
Windows - same thing;
Cygwin - seems to always return null
I suspect you will need to invoke the program from the command line as
java -cp ... ClassName < /dev/null

Try using .ready() function.
try {
if (stdError.ready())
{
while((line= stdError.readLine()) != null){
logger.error(line);
}
}
}
Do the same for the stdout.