How to close std-streams from java.lang.Process appropriate?

Question

This question is about java.lang.Process and its handling of stdin, stdout and stderr.

We have a class in our project that is an extension to org.

Answer 1

As the question you linked to states, it is better to read and discard the output and error streams. If you are using apache commons io, something like,

new Thread(new Runnable() {public void run() {IOUtils.copy(process.getInputStream(), new NullOutputStream());}}).start();
new Thread(new Runnable() {public void run() {IOUtils.copy(process.getErrorStream(), new NullOutputStream());}}).start();

You want to read and discard stdout and stderr in a separate thread to avoid problems such as the process blocking when it writes enough info to stderr or stdout to fill the buffer.

If you are worried about having two many threads, see this question

I don't think you need to worry about catching IOExceptions when copying stdout, stdin to NullOutputStream, since if there is an IOException reading from the process stdout/stdin, it is probably due to the process being dead itself, and writing to NullOutputStream will never throw an exception.

You don't need to check the return status of waitFor().

Do you want to wait for the process to complete? If so, you can do,

while(true) {
     try
     {
         process.waitFor();
         break;
     } catch(InterruptedException e) {
         //ignore, spurious interrupted exceptions can occur
     }

}

Looking at the link you provided you do need to close the streams when the process is complete, but destroy will do that for you.

So in the end, the method becomes,

public void close(Process process) {

    if(process == null) return;

    new Thread(new Runnable() {public void run() {IOUtils.copy(process.getInputStream(), new NullOutputStream());}}).start();
    new Thread(new Runnable() {public void run() {IOUtils.copy(process.getErrorStream(), new NullOutputStream());}}).start();
    while(true) {
        try
        {
            process.waitFor();
            //this will close stdin, stdout and stderr for the process
            process.destroy();
            break;
        } catch(InterruptedException e) {
            //ignore, spurious interrupted exceptions can occur
        }

   }
}

Answer 2

An attempt at simplifying your code:

public static void close(@Nullable Process process) throws IOException
{
    if(process == null) { return; }

    try
    {
        close(process.getOutputStream());
        close(process.getInputStream());
        close(process.getErrorStream());

        if(process.waitFor() != 0)
        {
            process.destroy();
        }
    }
    catch(InterruptedException e)
    {
        process.destroy();
    }
    catch (RuntimeException e)
    {
        throw (e instanceof IOException) ? e : new IOException(e);
    }
}

By catching Throwable I assume you wish to catch all unchecked exceptions. That is either a derivative of RuntimeException or Error. However Error should never be catched, so I have replaced Throwable with RuntimeException.

(It is still not a good idea to catch all RuntimeExceptions.)

Answer 3

Just to let you know what I have currently in our codebase:

public static void close(@Nullable Process process) throws IOException {
  if (process == null) {
    return;
  }

  Throwable t = null;

  try {
    flushQuietly(process.getOutputStream());
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  try {
    close(process.getOutputStream());
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  try {
    skipAllQuietly(null, TIMEOUT, process.getInputStream());
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  try {
    close(process.getInputStream());
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  try {
    skipAllQuietly(null, TIMEOUT, process.getErrorStream());
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  try {
    close(process.getErrorStream());
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  try {
    try {
      Thread monitor = ThreadMonitor.start(TIMEOUT);
      process.waitFor();
      ThreadMonitor.stop(monitor);
    }
    catch (InterruptedException e) {
      t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
      process.destroy();
    }
  }
  catch (Throwable e) {
    t = mostImportantThrowable(t, e);
  }

  if (t != null) {
    if (t instanceof Error) {
      throw (Error) t;
    }

    if (t instanceof RuntimeException) {
      throw (RuntimeException) t;
    }

    throw t instanceof IOException ? (IOException) t : new IOException(t);
  }
}

---

skipAllQuietly(...) consumes complete InputStreams. It uses internally an implementation similar to org.apache.commons.io.ThreadMonitor to interrupt consumption if a given timeout exceeded.

mostImportantThrowable(...) decides over what Throwable should be returned. Errors over everything. First occured higher prio than later occured. Nothing very important here since these Throwable are most probably discarded anyway later. We want to go on working here and we can only throw one, so we have to decide what we throw at the end, if ever.

close(...) are null-safe implementations to close stuff but throwing Exception when something went wrong.