[Newbies] Re: PipeableOSProcess incremental output

[David T. Lewis]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 06:03:18AM -0800, Sean P. DeNigris wrote:
> 
> David T. Lewis wrote
> > 
> > PipeableOSProcess is designed...
> > 
> 
> I learned a lot from your answer (I always forget I can chain them
> together), but I'm not clear whether it answered my question :)
> 
> Let me rephrase... In my original example:
>     PipeableOSProcess command: '/usr/local/bin/HandBrakeCLI -e x264 -q 20 -m
> --start-at duration:1 --stop-at duration:5 -i /Volumes/DISK_01 -o
> "/path/to/DISK_01.mp4"'
> 
> As a naive user, I would assume that "p errorUpToEnd" would show me the
> error output. I found that it did not unless I first sent "p
> updateErrorPipelineStream". From your answer, it sounds like the error
> stream should be automatically notified and updated when new data is
> available, but this doesn't seem to be happening.

Try using #errorUpToEndOfFile rather than #errorUpToEnd. This will
wait for all available data, as opposed to just the data that is
currently available.

The reason that you are getting an empty string is that you are
reading errorUpToEnd before that error output has been completely
updated. The data will not be available until the external process
has written it to its stderr, flushed the steam (usually by exiting),
and your Squeak VM has detected data available, your OSProcess
has read the data, and all of those buffered streams have been
updated. This all takes place asynchronously with semaphores being
signaled and background processes waking up to update the data.

You can also illustrate this simply by inserting a delay between
starting the command and reading its error output. If you wait
for a few hundred milliseconds, the data will magically appear
and the errorUpToEnd will now give you the results you expect.

HTH,
Dave