ProcessUtils and support classes offer

[Cris Perdue <cr...@perdues.com>]

Hello,

I would like to offer a small set of classes that I think would make 
good additions to the Jakarta Commons project. The main class is called 
ProcessUtils, and supporting classes move data from an InputStream to an 
OutputStream, or from a Reader to a Writer.  These are versions of 
classes that I have used from time to time for three or four years, 
though preparing them for public release has motivated me to do some 
reimplementation and to do a little cleanup of the public APIs, not to 
mention beefing up the docs.

The purpose of the main ProcessUtils class is to make it simpler to call 
external programs and receive the results back.  It was inspired 
especially by the TCL exec function and also resembles the Perl backtick 
operator.  A simple call to "df" using the simplest form of call could 
look something like:

String filestats = ProcessUtils.exec(new String[] {"df"});

The package handles program output to "standard error" and nonzero exit 
codes.

API documentation and a JAR archive with both source and binary are at 
http://perdues.com/process-utils.html.  I would like to get feedback 
from you all about the possibility of contributing this in some way to 
Jakarta Commons.

Cheers,
Cris Perdue

[io] Re: ProcessUtils and support classes offer

["matthew.hawthorne" <ma...@apache.org>]

Cris Perdue wrote:
> The purpose of the main ProcessUtils class is to make it simpler to call 
> external programs and receive the results back.  It was inspired 
> especially by the TCL exec function and also resembles the Perl backtick 
> operator.  A simple call to "df" using the simplest form of call could 
> look something like:
> 
> String filestats = ProcessUtils.exec(new String[] {"df"});
> 
> The package handles program output to "standard error" and nonzero exit 
> codes.


This may be a good fit for commons-io 
(http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/io/).   A class like ProcessUtils 
seems interesting, but it would definitely need some extensive testing 
on different platforms to make sure it's OK.

Consider submitting your stuff as a Bugzilla enhancement, so that  the 
commons-io developers can take a look when they
get a chance.

I believe the javadocs state that ProcessUtils throws an exception if 
anything is written to stderr.  I would like it if this were 
customizable, since a lot of programs write warnings and such to stderr, 
but still keep on running.  Perhaps it could become
some type of callback mechanism.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: commons-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: commons-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org