Making a system call that returns the stdout output as a string

Question

Perl and PHP do this with backticks. For example,

$output = `ls`;

Returns a directory listing. A similar function, system(\"foo\")

Answer 1

[At the request of Alexman and dreeves -- see comments --, you will find at this DZones Java Snippet page a full version Os-independent for making, in this instance, a 'ls'. This is a direct answer to their code-challenge.
What follows below is just the core: Runtime.exec, plus 2 thread to listen to stdout and stderr. ]

Java "Simple!":

E:\classes\com\javaworld\jpitfalls\article2>java GoodWindowsExec "dir *.java"
Executing cmd.exe /C dir *.java
...

Or in java code

String output = GoodWindowsExec.execute("dir");

But to do that, you need to code...
... this is embarrassing.

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
class StreamGobbler extends Thread
{
    InputStream is;
    String type;
    StringBuffer output = new StringBuffer();

    StreamGobbler(InputStream is, String type)
    {
        this.is = is;
        this.type = type;
    }

    public void run()
    {
        try
        {
            InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);
            String line=null;
            while ( (line = br.readLine()) != null)
                System.out.println(type + ">" + line);
                output.append(line+"\r\n")
            } catch (IOException ioe)
              {
                ioe.printStackTrace();  
              }
    }
    public String getOutput()
    {
        return this.output.toString();
    }
}
public class GoodWindowsExec
{
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        if (args.length < 1)
        {
            System.out.println("USAGE: java GoodWindowsExec <cmd>");
            System.exit(1);
        }
    }
    public static String execute(String aCommand)
    {
        String output = "";
        try
        {            
            String osName = System.getProperty("os.name" );
            String[] cmd = new String[3];
            if( osName.equals( "Windows 95" ) )
            {
                cmd[0] = "command.com" ;
                cmd[1] = "/C" ;
                cmd[2] = aCommand;
            }
            else if( osName.startsWith( "Windows" ) )
            {
                cmd[0] = "cmd.exe" ;
                cmd[1] = "/C" ;
                cmd[2] = aCommand;
            }

            Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
            System.out.println("Executing " + cmd[0] + " " + cmd[1] 
                               + " " + cmd[2]);
            Process proc = rt.exec(cmd);
            // any error message?
            StreamGobbler errorGobbler = new 
                StreamGobbler(proc.getErrorStream(), "ERROR");            

            // any output?
            StreamGobbler outputGobbler = new 
                StreamGobbler(proc.getInputStream(), "OUTPUT");

            // kick them off
            errorGobbler.start();
            outputGobbler.start();

            // any error???
            int exitVal = proc.waitFor();
            System.out.println("ExitValue: " + exitVal);   

            output = outputGobbler.getOutput();
            System.out.println("Final output: " + output);   

        } catch (Throwable t)
          {
            t.printStackTrace();
          }
        return output;
    }
}

Answer 2

Python

from subprocess import check_output as qx

output = qx(['ls', '-lt'])

Python <2.7 or <3.1

Extract subprocess.check_output() from subprocess.py or adapt something similar to:

import subprocess

def cmd_output(args, **kwds):
  kwds.setdefault("stdout", subprocess.PIPE)
  kwds.setdefault("stderr", subprocess.STDOUT)
  p = subprocess.Popen(args, **kwds)
  return p.communicate()[0]

print cmd_output("ls -lt".split())

The subprocess module has been in the stdlib since 2.4.

Answer 3

Erlang:

os:cmd("ls")

Answer 4

Don't forget Tcl:

set result [exec ls]

Answer 5

Perl, another way:

use IPC::Run3

my ($stdout, $stderr);
run3 ['ls'], undef, \$stdout, \$stderr
    or die "ls failed";

Useful because you can feed the command input, and get back both stderr and stdout separately. Nowhere near as neat/scary/slow/disturbing as IPC::Run, which can set up pipes to subroutines.

Answer 6

Granted, it is not the smaller ( from all the languages available ) but it shouldn't be that verbose.

This version is dirty. Exceptions should be handled, reading may be improved. This is just to show how a java version could start.

Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( "cmd /c " + command );
InputStream i = p.getInputStream();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for(  int c = 0 ; ( c =  i.read() ) > -1  ; ) {
    sb.append( ( char ) c );
}

Complete program below.

import java.io.*;

public class Test { 
    public static void main ( String [] args ) throws IOException { 
        String result = execute( args[0] );
        System.out.println( result );
    }
    private static String execute( String command ) throws IOException  { 
        Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec( "cmd /c " + command );
        InputStream i = p.getInputStream();
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for(  int c = 0 ; ( c =  i.read() ) > -1  ; ) {
            sb.append( ( char ) c );
        }
        i.close();
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

Sample ouput ( using the type command )

C:\oreyes\samples\java\readinput>java Test "type hello.txt"
This is a sample file
with some
lines

Sample output ( dir )

 C:\oreyes\samples\java\readinput>java Test "dir"
 El volumen de la unidad C no tiene etiqueta.
 El número de serie del volumen es:

 Directorio de C:\oreyes\samples\java\readinput

12/16/2008  05:51 PM    <DIR>          .
12/16/2008  05:51 PM    <DIR>          ..
12/16/2008  05:50 PM                42 hello.txt
12/16/2008  05:38 PM             1,209 Test.class
12/16/2008  05:47 PM               682 Test.java
               3 archivos          1,933 bytes
               2 dirs            840 bytes libres

Try any

java Test netstat
java Test tasklist
java Test "taskkill /pid 416"

EDIT

I must admit I'm not 100% sure this is the "best" way to do it. Feel free to post references and/or code to show how can it be improved or what's wrong with this.