Develop Reference

Java: Is PrintWriter providing some form of "clue" about the request-origin platform's preferred line endings?

This is about java.io.PrintWriter from Oracle JDK 8
I've written a small test to make sure some TCP-interfacing service (we don't own this service!) always returns CRLF and nothing else.
However, I notice that tests which are expected to fail (containing only LF) are passing...
When debugging the test, I see that the response is fine (only CRLF) - but we have a user that's complaining that he's still receiving the response with LF!
My thought currently is that: since I am using printWriter.println(query);, perhaps println() from the PrintWriter class (especially the ln part!) is providing my current CRLF (I am running the tests from a Win10 machine) and the server is trying to be nice and is therefore adapting the line endings according to clues received from the source.
I will commission a linux test box and I will write a simple application to confirm my conjecture above. However, even if I manage to find some correlation (I will update here), I would still like to confirm, with someone who knows the PrintWriter class, that this is indeed the location where things get "customized" and cause the server to switch line ending composition...
For example: Perhaps it's not PrintWriter, but the TcpIpService of the machine that is providing this clue? And therefore, my correlation here does not point to the cause of different responses (I.E.: It's not Java, it's the OS)
Update: Before trying it in linux, I tried changing the println into print but then the buffReader.read() (a java.io.BufferedReader method) gets "stuck".
I tried also swapping println() for write() and flush() - read() is stuck again.
How should I refactor the println() method I am using, to have control over the line endings provided? I would like to be able to simulate CRLF, CR and LF.
Update: I am including a small program to reproduce the part that I am interested in. Unfortunately, I am still quite far from obtaining a linux machine to see if the output from this program changes under linux:
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.net.Socket;
public class NewWhoisClient {
public static void main(String[] args) {
int portNumber = 43;
String whoisHostName = "213.248.242.76";
String query = "nic.beer";
Socket whoisSocket;
PrintWriter printWriter;
BufferedReader buffReader;
try {
whoisSocket = new Socket(whoisHostName, portNumber);
buffReader = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(whoisSocket.getInputStream())
);
printWriter =
new PrintWriter(whoisSocket.getOutputStream(),true);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new AssertionError("Socket setup failed", e);
}
try {
printWriter.println(query);
StringBuilder responseWIP = new StringBuilder();
int value;
while ((value = buffReader.read()) != -1) {
responseWIP.append((char) value);
}
String result = responseWIP.toString();
///
if (result.contains("\r\n")) {
System.out.println("Result contained CRLF");
} else {
System.out.println("Some other line ending or no CRLF at all");
}
///
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new AssertionError("Socket communication failed", e);
}
}
}

How to execute a interactive shell script using java Runtime?

I am wondering is there any way to execute following shell script, which waits for user input using java's Runtime class?
#!/bin/bash
echo "Please enter your name:"
read name
echo "Welcome $name"
I am using following java code to do this task but it just shows blank console.
public class TestShellScript {
public static void main(String[] args) {
File wd = new File("/mnt/client/");
System.out.println("Working Directory: " +wd);
Process proc = null;
try {
proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("sudo ./test.sh", null, wd);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Thing is when I execute above program, I believed it will execute a shell script and that shell script will wait for user input, but it just prints current directory and then exits. Is there any way to do this or it is not possible at all in java?
Thanks in advance

The reason it prints the current dir and exits is because your java app exits. You need to add a (threaded) listener to the input and error streams of your created process, and you'll probably want to add a printStream to the process's output stream
example:
proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmds);
PrintStream pw = new PrintStream(proc.getOutputStream());
FetcherListener fl = new FetcherListener() {
#Override
public void fetchedMore(byte[] buf, int start, int end) {
textOut.println(new String(buf, start, end - start));
}
#Override
public void fetchedAll(byte[] buf) {
}
};
IOUtils.loadDataASync(proc.getInputStream(), fl);
IOUtils.loadDataASync(proc.getErrorStream(), fl);
String home = System.getProperty("user.home");
//System.out.println("home: " + home);
String profile = IOUtils.loadTextFile(new File(home + "/.profile"));
pw.println(profile);
pw.flush();
To run this, you will need to download my sourceforge project: http://tus.sourceforge.net/ but hopefully the code snippet is instructive enough that you can just adapt to J2SE and whatever else you are using.

If you use a Java ProcessBuilder you should be able to get the Input, Error and Output streams of the Process you create.
These streams can be used to get information coming out of the process (like prompts for input) but they can also be written to to put information into the process directly too. For instance:
InputStream stdout = process.getInputStream ();
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader(stdout));
String line;
while(true){
line = reader.readLine();
//...
That'll get you the output from the process directly. I've not done it myself, but I'm pretty sure that process.getOutputStream() gives you something that can be written to directly to send input to the process.

The problem with running interactive programs, such as sudo, from Runtime.exec is that it attaches their stdin and stdout to pipes rather than the console device they need. You can make it work by redirecting the input and output to /dev/tty.
You can achieve the same behaviour using the new ProcessBuilder class, setting up the redirection using ProcessBuilder.Redirect.INHERIT.

Note sure at all you can send input to your script from Java. However I very strongly recommend to have a look at Commons Exec if you are to execute external scripts from Java:
Commons Exec homepage
Commons Exec API

Outputting result of "dir" to console in Java

I want to output the result of the "dir" command to the java console. I have already looked on Google and here, but none of the examples work for me, thus making me rite this post.
My code is as follows:
try
{
System.out.println("Thread started..");
String line = "";
String cmd = "dir";
Process child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd);
//Read output
BufferedReader dis = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(child.getInputStream() ));
while ((line = dis.readLine()) != null)
{
System.out.println("Line: " + line);
}
dis.close();
}catch (IOException e){
}
What am I doing wrong?
Any help would be very nice.
Thanks in advance,
Darryl

You cannot run "dir" as a process, you need to change it to String cmd = "cmd dir";.
You don't handle the exception at all. adding the line e.printStackTrace()); in the catch block would tell you what I wrote in (1). Never ignore exceptions!
You don't handle error stream. This might cause your program to hang, handle error stream and read from both streams (error and input) in parallel using different streams.

The best way is to use commons exec http://commons.apache.org/exec/
This has things that catch quirks that can really drive you up the wall, such as the whole process blocking if you didn't clear its output stream, escaping quotes in commands, etc.
Here is a method that will run the del command in windows successfully. Note the use of cmd since del is not a standalone executable:
private void deleteWithCmd(File toDelete) throws IOException {
CommandLine cmdLine = new CommandLine("cmd.exe");
cmdLine.addArgument("/C");
cmdLine.addArgument("del");
cmdLine.addArgument(toDelete.getAbsolutePath());
DefaultExecutor executor = new DefaultExecutor();
int exitValue = executor.execute(cmdLine);
}

a) What is the java console?
b) You should use javas File.listFiles () instead of Runtime.exec, which isn't portable, and makes Name splitting neccessary - a hard thing, for filenames which contain spaces, blanks, newlines and so on.
c) Whats wrong with your code?
d) Why don't you do anything in the case of Exception?

Here is a more thorough example that accounts for OS versions and error conditions ( as stated by MByD above)
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-2000/jw-1229-traps.html?page=4
Remember that using "exec" means that your application is no longer cross-platform and loses one of the main advantages of Java.
A better approach is to use java.io package.
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/dirs.html

You can also do something like that in java 6 :
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FilenameFilter;
import java.io.IOException;
public class ListFilesFromRegExp {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
File dir = new File("files/");
File[] files = dir.listFiles(new FilenameFilter() {
public boolean accept(File dir, String name) {
return name.matches("File[0-9].c");
}
});
for (int i = 0; i < files.length; i++) {
System.out.println(files[i].getAbsolutePath());
}
}
}

Writing Standard Input and waiting for Standard Output

I'm trying to create a Thread that keeps netsh windows command-line tool open so I can execute netsh commands without open it every single time.
The thing is, once I've created the Thread, just the first command call works... the subsequent calls seems to have no effect.
Here is my code:
public class NetshThread implements Runnable{
private static Process netshProcess = null;
private static BufferedInputStream netshInStream = null;
private static BufferedOutputStream netshOutStream = null;
public BufferedReader inPipe = null;
public void run(){
startNetsh();
}
public void startNetsh(){
try {
netshProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("netsh");
netshInStream = new BufferedInputStream(netshProcess.getInputStream());
netshOutStream = new BufferedOutputStream(netshProcess.getOutputStream());
inPipe = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(netshInStream));
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void executeCommand(String command){
System.out.println("Executing: " + command);
try {
String str = "";
netshOutStream.write(command.getBytes());
netshOutStream.close();
while ((str = inPipe.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(str);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void closeNetsh(){
executeCommand("exit");
}
public static void main(String[] args){
NetshThread nthread = new NetshThread();
nthread.run();
String command = "int ip set address " +
"\"Local Area Connection 6\" static .69.69.69 255.255.255.0";
nthread.executeCommand(command);
command = "int ip set address " +
"\"Local Area Connection 6\" static 69.69.69.69 255.255.255.0";
nthread.executeCommand(command);
System.out.println("*** DONE ***");
}
}
Thank you!!! =)
Update 1:
Ok... I'm now using a PrintWriter instead... so I think I don't need to flush anything anymore, since the constructor is:
new PrintWriter(netshOutStream, true); (just like Mr. Shiny told me)...
Suppose I decide to break the while loop when the first output line is available... I doesn't work either... the next command wont be executed.... My code now looks like:
import java.io.*;
public class NetshThread implements Runnable{
private static Process netshProcess = null;
private static BufferedInputStream netshInStream = null;
private static BufferedOutputStream netshOutStream = null;
public BufferedReader inPipe = null;
private PrintWriter netshWriter = null;
public void run(){
startNetsh();
}
public void startNetsh(){
try {
netshProcess = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("netsh");
netshInStream = new BufferedInputStream(netshProcess.getInputStream());
netshOutStream = new BufferedOutputStream(netshProcess.getOutputStream());
netshWriter = new PrintWriter(netshOutStream, true);
inPipe = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(netshInStream));
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void executeCommand(String command){
System.out.println("Executing: " + command);
try {
String str = "";
netshWriter.println(command);
while ((str = inPipe.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println(str);
break;
}
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void closeNetsh(){
executeCommand("exit");
}
public static void main(String[] args){
NetshThread nthread = new NetshThread();
Thread xs = new Thread(nthread);
xs.run();
String command = "int ip set address " +
"\"Local Area Connection 6\" static .69.69.69 255.255.255.0";
nthread.executeCommand(command);
command = "int ip set address " +
"\"Local Area Connection 6\" static 69.69.69.69 255.255.255.0";
nthread.executeCommand(command);
System.out.println("*** DONE ***");
}
}
and the output I get:
Executing: int ip set address "Local
Area Connection 6" static .69.69.69
255.255.255.0 netsh>.69.69.69 is not an acceptable value for addr.
Executing: int ip set address "Local
Area Connection 6" static 69.69.69.69
Why the second command is not executed???
255.255.255.0
* DONE *
Update 2:
Everything seemed to work just fine until a teacher tried my app in a spanish-windows enviroment....
my code looks like this:
Scanner fi = new Scanner(netshProcess.getInputStream());
public void executeCommand(String command) {
System.out.println("Executing: " + command);
String str = "";
netshWriter.println(command);
fi.skip("\\s*");
str = fi.nextLine();
System.out.println(str);
}
and what i need is to somehow set the netshWriter encoding to the windows default.
Can anyone know who to do this?

You are closing the output stream.

You need to move the stream processing into separate threads. What's happening is that inPipe.readLine() is blocking waiting for netsh to return data. Apache has a package that deals with process handling. I'd look at using that instead of rolling your own (http://commons.apache.org/exec/)

This seems wrong in many ways.
First, why a Runnable object? This isn't ever passed to a Thread anywhere. The only thread you're creating isn't a java thread, it is an OS process created by exec().
Second, you need a way to know when netsh is done. Your loop that reads the output of netsh will just run forever because readLine will only return null when netsh closes its standard out (which is never, in your case). You need to look for some standard thing that netsh prints when it is done processing your request.
And as others mentioned, close is bad. Use a flush. And hope netsh uses a flush back to you...

I'd try:
PrintWriter netshWriter = new PrintWriter(netshOutputStream, true); // auto-flush writer
netshWriter.println(command);
No close()ing the stream, flush the stream automatically, and uses a writer to send character data rather than relying on the platforms "native character set".

You do definitely need to remove the close, else you'll never be able to execute another command. When you say "it won't work" once the close() call removed, do you mean no commands are processed?
Chances are that after you send the bytes for the command, you need to send some kind of confirmation key for the process to start, well, processing it. If you'd normally enter this from the keyboard it might be as simple as a carriage return, otherwise it might need to be a Ctrl-D or similar.
I'd try replacing the close() line with
netshOutStream.write('\n');
and see if that works. Depending on the software you might need to change the character(s) you send to signify the end of the command, but this general approach should see you through.
EDIT:
It would also be prudent to call
netshOutStream.flush();
after the above lines; without the flush there's no guarantee that your data will be written and in fact, since you're using a BufferedInputStream I'm 99% sure that nothing will be written until the stream is flushed. Hence why the code afterwards blocks, as you're waiting for a response while the process has not seen any input yet either and is waiting for you to send it some.

I've used scanner instead of BufferedReader, just because I like it. So this code works:
Scanner fi = new Scanner(netshProcess.getInputStream());
public void executeCommand(String command) {
System.out.println("Executing: " + command);
String str = "";
netshWriter.println(command);
fi.skip("\\s*");
str = fi.nextLine();
System.out.println(str);
}
It executes both commands.

Runtime exec and a custom built RTF editor

I have a class that manages the creation of RTF documents and a method in that class that calls the RTF editor with a XML file for display.
All but one user can access this editor without any issues. This one user consistently runs into an issue where their application just hangs. There are no errors in any logs. Normally this kind of problem is easily identified, reproduced and corrected, however, I can't for the life of my reproduce it so my attempts at debugging are failing.
Basically the code is as follows:
int exitVal = CUBSRTFEditor.runRTFEditor("c:\\tmp\\control"+ap_doc_id+".xml", xml,"I:\\AppealsLetters.exe /process \"c:\\tmp\\control"+ap_doc_id+".xml\"");
public static int runRTFEditor(String xmlLocation, String xmlContent, String executePath)
{
int exitVal = 0;
createLocalFile(xmlLocation, xmlContent);
try
{
System.out.println("executePath must = "+executePath);
Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
Process proc = rt.exec(executePath);
System.out.println("after executePath runs");
//exhaust that stream before waiting for the process to exit
InputStream inputstream = proc.getInputStream();
InputStreamReader inputstreamreader = new InputStreamReader(inputstream);
BufferedReader bufferedreader = new BufferedReader(inputstreamreader);
// read the ls output
String line;
while ((line = bufferedreader.readLine())!= null)
{
System.out.println(line);
}
exitVal = proc.waitFor();
}
catch (Throwable t)
{
t.printStackTrace();
}
CUBSRTFEditor.deleteTempFile(xmlLocation);
return exitVal;
}
The last output is the first System.out. When I take the xml file and execute this on any other PC it executes without issue. I see no useful info in proc.getErrorStream() or proc.getOutputStream().
The JDK's Javadoc documentation on this problem (exec hanging):
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, and even deadlock.
I try exhausting that stream before waiting for the process to exit and that does not seem to help as it never seems to get to that point (the second System.out is not displayed)
Have I implemented this incorrectly? Am I missing something important? Any ideas on how to get more info out of the process would be great.
I am stuck....

Runtime.exec() is a deceptively nasty little spud to work with. I found this article (old, but still relevant) to be quite helpful. You can always skip to Page 4 for some highly gankable sample code. :-)
At a glance, your code needs to handle both proc.getOutputStream() and proc.getErrorStream(), which is a good reason to handle those streams in separate threads.

I wanted to update this because the change went into Production today and worked. Based off of BlairHippo's suggestions I got it to work with an anonymous inner class to create a separate thread to exhaust both the Error and Input streams.
new Thread(new Runnable(){
public void run()
{
try
{
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(proc.getErrorStream()));
String line;
while ((line = br.readLine())!= null)
{
System.out.println(line);
}
}
catch (Throwable t)
{
t.printStackTrace();
}
}
}).start();