[squeak-dev] OSProcess Question

Eric Gade eric.gade at gmail.com
Sat Aug 27 14:44:01 UTC 2022


Hi Dave,

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation and examples. I'm using Squeak 6.1
here, which might be an issue, but the following message responds with a
DNU:

OSProcess outputOf: 'which node'

I don't see any method in the system called #outputOf:

I installed OSProcess and CommandShell via the optional additions during
the setup wizard.

On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 10:36 AM David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:

> Hi Eric,
>
> Maybe it will help if I also give an example of Squeak interacting with
> an external program through stdio pipes Here I will use /bin/bash as the
> exteral program. You would want to substitute that with the full path
> to whatever program you are actually trying to run.
>
> You can experiment with the example below by copying it into a workspace:
>
>
>     "Create an external OS process running the /bin/bash program. The
>     program will be connected to Squeak through stdio pipes."
>     bashProxy := PipeableOSProcess command: '/bin/bash'.
>
>     "Send a command line to the bash program, followed by a line
>     terminator, and flush the stream so the command is available to
>     the bash program."
>     bashProxy nextPutAll: 'who'; nextPut: Character lf; flush.
>
>     "Wait a short time to give the bash program time to run, and to send
>     the result back to Squeak."
>     (Delay forMilliseconds: 20) wait.
>
>     "Read all available data from the stdout stream of the bash process.
>     Note also methods #errorUpToEndOfFile, #upToEndOfFile."
>     bashProxy upToEnd.
>
>     "When you are done interacting with your bash program, close it and
>     allow the external process to exit."
>     bashProxy close
>
> Dave
>
> On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 11:19:04PM -0400, David T. Lewis wrote:
> > Hi Eric and Tom,
> >
> > On Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 04:27:56PM -0400, Eric Gade wrote:
> > > I believe what is happening is that the various #command: messages in
> > > OSProcess classes are executing without searching my PATH. Even if I
> add a
> > > copy of the current running process environment and set that as the
> > > environment of a new PipeableOSProcess, for example, I can't even get a
> > > result for `which node`. I can see that /usr/bin and /usr/sbin are on
> the
> > > path from within Squeak.
> > >
> >
> > Yes that is correct. On a unix system, the interpretation of PATH (and
> > lots of other things) are done by the shell, which is typically an
> > executable program such as /bin/bash. The actual programs and commands
> > that you run on a unix system are subprocesses of that shell program.
> > So the shell interprets the PATH and uses it to find the program that
> > you want to run.
> >
> > In Squeak with OSProcess, your Squeak virtual machine is the "shell"
> > and you can directly run programs by creating subprocesses of the VM
> > process. Of course, you can chose to run the executable program
> > /bin/bash, in which case you have a real unix shell, and you can let
> > that shell run other commands in the normal way.
> >
> > You can also run any other executable directly (and I think this is
> > what you have been doing). In that case there is no unix shell program
> > involved, and you would need to specify the fully qualified path to
> > the program, and you would need to do any necessary command parameter
> > expansion that would otherwise have been done by the unix shell.
> >
> > In OSProcess/CommandShell there is also a pure Smalltalk emulation
> > of a simple unix shell. This is by no means a complete emulation of
> > /bin/bash but it is sufficient to handle things like PATH expansion
> > and command pipeline composition without requiring the actual
> > /bin/bash shell.
> >
> > So to tie the pieces together, if you want to run the command "which
> node"
> > you can do this:
> >
> >   OSProcess outputOf: 'which node'
> >
> > This uses a CommandShell in Squeak to do the shell processing to
> > locate and run the program /usr/bin/which (so no need for /bin/bash).
> > It takes some patience but if you step through this it a debugger
> > you will be able to see what is going on. The Smalltalk command
> > shell emulation sets everything up so that OSProcess can run the
> > /usr/bin/which program as a direct subprocess of the Squeak VM.
> >
> > > Another example is that `PipeableOSProcess class >>
> #unixCommandPipeLine`
> > > responds with an empty string when I inspect it.
> > >
> > > Might this all be related to newer macOS settings somehow?
> > >
> >
> > This method is just an example to show how to compose a command pipeline
> > with some programs that would be found on a typical Unix/Linux system.
> > I'm not sure what it does on Mac.  It uses the programs 'ps', 'grep',
> > and 'cut', so if any of these is not found on your system, it probably
> > will just give an empty string in the output (plus some error output
> > that you can probably find if you dig through it in a debugger).
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >
>
>

-- 
Eric
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20220827/3bd867c8/attachment.html>


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list