How to start a child process in GnuCOBOL?
In Node.js, we can use either spawn or exec to start child processes:
var proc = require("child_process").spawn("ls", ["-l"]);
proc.stdout.on("data", function (chunk) {
console.log(chunk);
});
// or
var proc = require("child_process").exec("ls -l"], function (err, stdout, stderr) {
...
});
Both of the examples above run ls -l (list the files and directories). How can the same thing be achieved in COBOL?
Use a common COBOL extension which is supported since years in GnuCOBOL (formerly OpenCOBOL), too:
CALL 'SYSTEM' USING whatever END-CALL
This works with 'cobcrun', too and can be useful if you need a COBOL process with a separate environment (EXTERNAL items, ACCEPT x FROM y / SET ENVIRONMENT y TO x) or runtime configuration (for example via cobcrun -c different.cfg OTHERMAIN).
Your original sample may look like (without the option to use pipes which would be a different question):
CALL 'SYSTEM' USING 'ls -l >dirlist'
ON EXCEPTION
CALL 'SYSTEM' USING 'dir >dirlist'
END-CALL
END-CALL
Afterwards you can read the dirlist as a normal line sequential file.
Simon
BTW: Given your sample you may look for CALL 'C$LISTDIR'.
Related
In my Informix 4GL program, I have an input field where the user can insert a URL and the feed is later being sent over to the web via a script.
How can I validate the URL at the time of input, to ensure that it's a live link? Can I make a call and see if I get back any errors?
I4GL checking the URL
There is no built-in function to do that (URLs didn't exist when I4GL was invented, amongst other things).
If you can devise a C method to do that, you can arrange to call that method through the C interface. You'll write the method in native C, and then write an I4GL-callable C interface function using the normal rules. When you build the program with I4GL c-code, you'll link the extra C functions too. If you build the program with I4GL-RDS (p-code), you'll need to build a custom runner with the extra function(s) exposed. All of this is standard technique for I4GL.
In general terms, the C interface code you'll need will look vaguely like this:
#include <fglsys.h>
// Standard interface for I4GL-callable C functions
extern int i4gl_validate_url(int nargs);
// Using obsolescent interface functions
int i4gl_validate_url(int nargs)
{
if (nargs != 1)
fgl_fatal(__FILE__, __LINE__, -1318);
char url[4096];
popstring(url, sizeof(url));
int r = validate_url(url); // Your C function
retint(r);
return 1;
}
You can and should check the manuals but that code, using the 'old style' function names, should compile correctly. The code can be called in I4GL like this:
DEFINE url CHAR(256)
DEFINE rc INTEGER
LET url = "http://www.google.com/"
LET rc = i4gl_validate_url(url)
IF rc != 0 THEN
ERROR "Invalid URL"
ELSE
MESSAGE "URL is OK"
END IF
Or along those general lines. Exactly what values you return depends on your decisions about how to return a status from validate_url(). If need so be, you can return multiple values from the interface function (e.g. error number and text of error message). Etc. This is about the simplest possible design for calling some C code to validate a URL from within an I4GL program.
Modern C interface functions
The function names in the interface library were all changed in the mid-00's, though the old names still exist as macros. The old names were:
popstring(char *buffer, int buflen)
retint(int retval)
fgl_fatal(const char *file, int line, int errnum)
You can find the revised documentation at IBM Informix 4GL v7.50.xC3: Publication library in PDF in the 4GL Reference Manual, and you need Appendix C "Using C with IBM Informix 4GL".
The new names start ibm_lib4gl_:
ibm_libi4gl_popMInt()
ibm_libi4gl_popString()
As to the error reporting function, there is one — it exists — but I don't have access to documentation for it any more. It'll be in the fglsys.h header. It takes an error number as one argument; there's the file name and a line number as the other arguments. And it will, presumably, be ibm_lib4gl_… and there'll be probably be Fatal or perhaps fatal (or maybe Err or err) in the rest of the name.
I4GL running a script that checks the URL
Wouldn't it be easier to write a shell script to get the status code? That might work if I can return the status code or any existing results back to the program into a variable? Can I do that?
Quite possibly. If you want the contents of the URL as a string, though, you'll might end up wanting to call C. It is certainly worth thinking about whether calling a shell script from within I4GL is doable. If so, it will be a lot simpler (RUN "script", IIRC, where the literal string would probably be replaced by a built-up string containing the command and the URL). I believe there are file I/O functions in I4GL now, too, so if you can get the script to write a file (trivial), you can read the data from the file without needing custom C. For a long time, you needed custom C to do that.
I just need to validate the URL before storing it into the database. I was thinking about:
#!/bin/bash
read -p "URL to check: " url
if curl --output /dev/null --silent --head --fail "$url"; then
printf '%s\n' "$url exist"
else
printf '%s\n' "$url does not exist"
fi
but I just need the output instead of /dev/null to be into a variable. I believe the only option is to dump the output into a temp file and read from there.
Instead of having I4GL run the code to validate the URL, have I4GL run a script to validate the URL. Use the exit status of the script and dump the output of curl into /dev/null.
FUNCTION check_url(url)
DEFINE url VARCHAR(255)
DEFINE command_line VARCHAR(255)
DEFINE exit_status INTEGER
LET command_line = "check_url ", url
RUN command_line RETURNING exit_status
RETURN exit_status
END FUNCTION {check_url}
Your calling code can analyze exit_status to see whether it worked. A value of 0 indicates success; non-zero indicates a problem of some sort, which can be deemed 'URL does not work'.
Make sure the check_url script (a) exits with status zero on success and non-zero on any sort of failure, and (b) doesn't write anything to standard output (or standard error) by default. The writing to standard error or output will screw up screen layouts, etc, and you do not want that. (You can obviously have options to the script that enable standard output, or you can invoke the script with options to suppress standard output and standard error, or redirect the outputs to /dev/null; however, when used by the I4GL program, it should be silent.)
Your 'script' (check_url) could be as simple as:
#!/bin/bash
exec curl --output /dev/null --silent --head --fail "${1:-http://www.example.com/"
This passes the first argument to curl, or the non-existent example.com URL if no argument is given, and replaces itself with curl, which generates a zero/non-zero exit status as required. You might add 2>/dev/null to the end of the command line to ensure that error messages are not seen. (Note that it will be hell debugging this if anything goes wrong; make sure you've got provision for debugging.)
The exec is a minor optimization; you could omit it with almost no difference in result. (I could devise a scheme that would probably spot the difference; it involves signalling the curl process, though — kill -9 9999 or similar, where the 9999 is the PID of the curl process — and isn't of practical significance.)
Given that the script is just one line of code that invokes another program, it would be possible to embed all that in the I4GL program. However, having an external shell script (or Perl script, or …) has merits of flexibility; you can edit it to log attempts, for example, without changing the I4GL code at all. One more file to distribute, but better flexibility — keep a separate script, even though it could all be embedded in the I4GL.
As Jonathan said "URLs didn't exist when I4GL was invented, amongst other things". What you will find is that the products that have grown to superceed Informix-4gl such as FourJs Genero will cater for new technologies and other things invented after I4GL.
Using FourJs Genero, the code below will do what you are after using the Informix 4gl syntax you are familiar with
IMPORT com
MAIN
-- Should succeed and display 1
DISPLAY validate_url("http://www.google.com")
DISPLAY validate_url("http://www.4js.com/online_documentation/fjs-fgl-manual-html/index.html#c_fgl_nf.html") -- link to some of the features added to I4GL by Genero
-- Should fail and display 0
DISPLAY validate_url("http://www.google.com/testing")
DISPLAY validate_url("http://www.google2.com")
END MAIN
FUNCTION validate_url(url)
DEFINE url STRING
DEFINE req com.HttpRequest
DEFINE resp com.HttpResponse
-- Returns TRUE if http request to a URL returns 200
TRY
LET req = com.HttpRequest.create(url)
CALL req.doRequest()
LET resp = req.getResponse()
IF resp.getStatusCode() = 200 THEN
RETURN TRUE
END IF
-- May want to handle other HTTP status codes
CATCH
-- May want to capture case if not connected to internet etc
END TRY
RETURN FALSE
END FUNCTION
I would like to assign output of a bash command to a variable in .lua script. Is it possible?
For instance, something similar to:
var = `ps uax | grep myprocess`
Yes, you need to use io.popen for this.
io.popen (prog [, mode])
Starts program prog in a separated process and returns a file handle that you can use to read data from this program (if mode is "r", the default) or to write data to this program (if mode is "w").
This function is system dependent and is not available on all platforms.
Also see How to execute an external command?.
io.popen calls a command but returns a file object so you can read the output of the command, if the second argument is 'r', but you can also pass input to a command with a second argument of 'w'. Unfortunately, you don't get a io.popen2, and you don't get the return code.
I have embedded lua and I want precompile my script. For that, I call the main of luac (with argc the number of file is 1). My problem is on the function doargs of luac. I don't understand the use of the variable i. Because when I use one script. The result of i after the doargs function is 1. And in the main function we have argc -= i after. And so argc = 0 and I have a error "no file". Any idea ?
luac is meant to be a command line utility for compiling .lua files. This expected usage is the reason why you're getting an error.
When you start an executable the OS passes the name of the program as its first argument (argv[0]). The luac main function assumes it is being called by the OS, so it expects that there will always be at least one argument and its argv[0] will be the name of the executable.
For this reason doargs starts its for loop at 1 and will always ignore that first (0th) argument. It returns how many options it has processed, which is also the offset of the first filename in the argv array. The main function uses this to know where the list of files starts.
If you really want to use the main function to precompile your scripts, then supply an extra dummy argument at the beginning of your argument array and list your files after that. Preferably you should use luac from the command line and supply an output file where the precompiled script will be stored like this:
luac -o outputFile script.lua
Alternatively, take a look at chapter 8 of Programming in Lua (Compilation, Execution, and Errors) for a pure Lua solution, or the the luaL_dofile, luaL_dostring, lua_dump, and lua_load functions in the Reference Manual for a C API solution.
I need to use Lua to run a binary program that may write something in its stdout and also returns a status code (also known as "exit status").
I searched the web and couldn't find something that does what I need. However I found out that in Lua:
os.execute() returns the status code
io.popen() returns a file handler that can be used to read process output
However I need both. Writing a wrapper function that runs both functions behind the scene is not an option because of process overhead and possibly changes in result on consecutive runs. I need to write a function like this:
function run(binpath)
...
return output,exitcode
end
Does anyone has an idea how this problem can be solved?
PS. the target system rung Linux.
With Lua 5.2 I can do the following and it works
-- This will open the file
local file = io.popen('dmesg')
-- This will read all of the output, as always
local output = file:read('*all')
-- This will get a table with some return stuff
-- rc[1] will be true, false or nil
-- rc[3] will be the signal
local rc = {file:close()}
I hope this helps!
I can't use Lua 5.2, I use this helper function.
function execute_command(command)
local tmpfile = '/tmp/lua_execute_tmp_file'
local exit = os.execute(command .. ' > ' .. tmpfile .. ' 2> ' .. tmpfile .. '.err')
local stdout_file = io.open(tmpfile)
local stdout = stdout_file:read("*all")
local stderr_file = io.open(tmpfile .. '.err')
local stderr = stderr_file:read("*all")
stdout_file:close()
stderr_file:close()
return exit, stdout, stderr
end
This is how I do it.
local process = io.popen('command; echo $?') -- echo return code of last run command
local lastline
for line in process:lines() do
lastline = line
end
print(lastline) -- the return code is the last line of output
If the last line has fixed length you can read it directly using file:seek("end", -offset), offset should be the length of the last line in bytes.
This functionality is provided in C by pclose.
Upon successful return, pclose() shall return the termination status
of the command language interpreter.
The interpreter returns the termination status of its child.
But Lua doesn't do this right (io.close always returns true). I haven't dug into these threads but some people are complaining about this brain damage.
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2004-05/msg00005.html
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2011-02/msg00387.html
If you're running this code on Win32 or in a POSIX environment, you could try this Lua extension: http://code.google.com/p/lua-ex-api/
Alternatively, you could write a small shell script (assuming bash or similar is available) that:
executes the correct executable, capturing the exit code into a shell variable,
prints a newline and terminal character/string onto standard out
prints the shell variables value (the exit code) onto standard out
Then, capture all the output of io.popen and parse backward.
Full disclosure: I'm not a Lua developer.
yes , your are right that os.execute() has returns and it's very simple if you understand how to run your command with and with out lua
you also may want to know how many variables it returns , and it might take a while , but i think you can try
local a, b, c, d, e=os.execute(-what ever your command is-)
for my example a is an first returned argument , b is the second returned argument , and etc.. i think i answered your question right, based off of what you are asking.
I wrote the following two functions, and call the second ("callAndWait") from JavaScript running inside Windows Script Host. My overall intent is to call one command line program from another. That is, I'm running the initial scripting using cscript, and then trying to run something else (Ant) from that script.
function readAllFromAny(oExec)
{
if (!oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream)
return oExec.StdOut.ReadLine();
if (!oExec.StdErr.AtEndOfStream)
return "STDERR: " + oExec.StdErr.ReadLine();
return -1;
}
// Execute a command line function....
function callAndWait(execStr) {
var oExec = WshShell.Exec(execStr);
while (oExec.Status == 0)
{
WScript.Sleep(100);
var output;
while ( (output = readAllFromAny(oExec)) != -1) {
WScript.StdOut.WriteLine(output);
}
}
}
Unfortunately, when I run my program, I don't get immediate feedback about what the called program is doing. Instead, the output seems to come in fits and starts, sometimes waiting until the original program has finished, and sometimes it appears to have deadlocked. What I really want to do is have the spawned process actually share the same StdOut as the calling process, but I don't see a way to do that. Just setting oExec.StdOut = WScript.StdOut doesn't work.
Is there an alternate way to spawn processes that will share the StdOut & StdErr of the launching process? I tried using "WshShell.Run(), but that gives me a "permission denied" error. That's problematic, because I don't want to have to tell my clients to change how their Windows environment is configured just to run my program.
What can I do?
You cannot read from StdErr and StdOut in the script engine in this way, as there is no non-blocking IO as Code Master Bob says. If the called process fills up the buffer (about 4KB) on StdErr while you are attempting to read from StdOut, or vice-versa, then you will deadlock/hang. You will starve while waiting for StdOut and it will block waiting for you to read from StdErr.
The practical solution is to redirect StdErr to StdOut like this:
sCommandLine = """c:\Path\To\prog.exe"" Argument1 argument2"
Dim oExec
Set oExec = WshShell.Exec("CMD /S /C "" " & sCommandLine & " 2>&1 """)
In other words, what gets passed to CreateProcess is this:
CMD /S /C " "c:\Path\To\prog.exe" Argument1 argument2 2>&1 "
This invokes CMD.EXE, which interprets the command line. /S /C invokes a special parsing rule so that the first and last quote are stripped off, and the remainder used as-is and executed by CMD.EXE. So CMD.EXE executes this:
"c:\Path\To\prog.exe" Argument1 argument2 2>&1
The incantation 2>&1 redirects prog.exe's StdErr to StdOut. CMD.EXE will propagate the exit code.
You can now succeed by reading from StdOut and ignoring StdErr.
The downside is that the StdErr and StdOut output get mixed together. As long as they are recognisable you can probably work with this.
Another technique which might help in this situation is to redirect the standard error stream of the command to accompany the standard output.
Do this by adding "%comspec% /c" to the front and "2>&1" to the end of the execStr string.
That is, change the command you run from:
zzz
to:
%comspec% /c zzz 2>&1
The "2>&1" is a redirect instruction which causes the StdErr output (file descriptor 2) to be written to the StdOut stream (file descriptor 1).
You need to include the "%comspec% /c" part because it is the command interpreter which understands about the command line redirect. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee156605.aspx
Using "%comspec%" instead of "cmd" gives portability to a wider range of Windows versions.
If your command contains quoted string arguments, it may be tricky to get them right:
the specification for how cmd handles quotes after "/c" seems to be incomplete.
With this, your script needs only to read the StdOut stream, and will receive both standard output and standard error.
I used this with "net stop wuauserv", which writes to StdOut on success (if the service is running)
and StdErr on failure (if the service is already stopped).
First, your loop is broken in that it always tries to read from oExec.StdOut first. If there is no actual output then it will hang until there is. You wont see any StdErr output until StdOut.atEndOfStream becomes true (probably when the child terminates). Unfortunately, there is no concept of non-blocking I/O in the script engine. That means calling read and having it return immediately if there is no data in the buffer. Thus there is probably no way to get this loop to work as you want. Second, WShell.Run does not provide any properties or methods to access the standard I/O of the child process. It creates the child in a separate window, totally isolated from the parent except for the return code. However, if all you want is to be able to SEE the output from the child then this might be acceptable. You will also be able to interact with the child (input) but only through the new window (see SendKeys).
As for using ReadAll(), this would be even worse since it collects all the input from the stream before returning so you wouldn't see anything at all until the stream was closed. I have no idea why the example places the ReadAll in a loop which builds a string, a single if (!WScript.StdIn.AtEndOfStream) should be sufficient to avoid exceptions.
Another alternative might be to use the process creation methods in WMI. How standard I/O is handled is not clear and there doesn't appear to be any way to allocate specific streams as StdIn/Out/Err. The only hope would be that the child would inherit these from the parent but that's what you want, isn't it? (This comment based upon an idea and a little bit of research but no actual testing.)
Basically, the scripting system is not designed for complicated interprocess communication/synchronisation.
Note: Tests confirming the above were performed on Windows XP Sp2 using Script version 5.6. Reference to current (5.8) manuals suggests no change.
Yes, the Exec function seems to be broken when it comes to terminal output.
I have been using a similar function function ConsumeStd(e) {WScript.StdOut.Write(e.StdOut.ReadAll());WScript.StdErr.Write(e.StdErr.ReadAll());} that I call in a loop similar to yours. Not sure if checking for EOF and reading line by line is better or worse.
You might have hit the deadlock issue described on this Microsoft Support site.
One suggestion is to always read both from stdout and stderr.
You could change readAllFromAny to:
function readAllFromAny(oExec)
{
var output = "";
if (!oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream)
output = output + oExec.StdOut.ReadLine();
if (!oExec.StdErr.AtEndOfStream)
output = output + "STDERR: " + oExec.StdErr.ReadLine();
return output ? output : -1;
}