The following listing contains the interface of the Pipes unit.
This unit provides routines to start a child process and write to/read from its Input/Output/StdErr via pipes. All of this is emulated transparently under Dos as far as possible.
{ Piping data from and to processes
Copyright (C) 1998-2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Author: Frank Heckenbach <frank@pascal.gnu.de>
This file is part of GNU Pascal.
GNU Pascal is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your
option) any later version.
GNU Pascal is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with GNU Pascal; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA.
As a special exception, if you link this file with files compiled
with a GNU compiler to produce an executable, this does not cause
the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public
License. This exception does not however invalidate any other
reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU
General Public License. }
{$gnu-pascal,I-}
{$if __GPC_RELEASE__ < 20030303}
{$error This unit requires GPC release 20030303 or newer.}
{$endif}
{ Keep this consistent with the one in pipesc.c }
{$if defined (MSDOS) or defined (__MINGW32__)}
{$define NOFORK}
{$endif}
unit Pipes;
interface
uses GPC;
const
PipeForking = {$ifdef NOFORK} False {$else} True {$endif};
type
TProcedure = procedure;
PWaitPIDResult = ^TWaitPIDResult;
TWaitPIDResult = (PIDNothing, PIDExited, PIDSignaled, PIDStopped,
PIDUnknown);
PPipeProcess = ^TPipeProcess;
TPipeProcess = record
PID : Integer; { Process ID of process forked }
SignalPID: Integer; { Process ID to send the signal to.
Equals PID by default }
OpenPipes: Integer; { Number of pipes to/from the
process, for internal use }
Signal : Integer; { Send this signal (if not 0) to the
process after all pipes have been
closed after some time }
Seconds : Integer; { Wait so many seconds before
sending the signal if the process
has not terminated by itself }
Wait : Boolean; { Wait for the process, even longer
than Seconds seconds, after
sending the signal (if any) }
Result : PWaitPIDResult; { Default nil. If a pointer to a
variable is stored here, its
destination will contain the
information whether the process
terminated by itself, or was
terminated or stopped by a signal,
when waiting after closing the
pipes }
Status : ^Integer; { Default nil. If a pointer to a
variable is stored here, its
destination will contain the exit
status if the process terminated
by itself, or the number of the
signal otherwise, when waiting
after closing the pipes }
end;
var
{ Default values for TPipeProcess records created by Pipe }
DefaultPipeSignal : Integer = 0;
DefaultPipeSeconds: Integer = 0;
DefaultPipeWait : Boolean = True;
{ The procedure Pipe starts a process whose name is given by
ProcessName, with the given parameters (can be Null if no
parameters) and environment, and create pipes from and/or to the
process' standard input/output/error. ProcessName is searched for
in the PATH with FSearchExecutable. Any of ToInputFile,
FromOutputFile and FromStdErrFile can be Null if the corresponding
pipe is not wanted. FromOutputFile and FromStdErrFile may be
identical, in which case standard output and standard error are
redirected to the same pipe. The behaviour of other pairs of files
being identical is undefined, and useless, anyway. The files are
Assigned and Reset or Rewritten as appropriate. Errors are
returned in IOResult. If Process is not Null, a pointer to a
record is stored there, from which the PID of the process created
can be read, and by writing to which the action after all pipes
have been closed can be changed. (The record is automatically
Dispose'd of after all pipes have been closed.) If automatic
waiting is turned off, the caller should get the PID from the
record before it's Dispose'd of, and wait for the process sometime
in order to avoid zombies. If no redirections are performed (i.e.,
all 3 files are Null), the caller should wait for the process with
WaitPipeProcess. When an error occurs, Process is not assigned to,
and the state of the files is undefined, so be sure to check
IOResult before going on.
ChildProc, if not nil, is called in the child process after
forking and redirecting I/O, but before executing the new process.
It can even be called instead of executing a new process
(ProcessName can be empty then).
The procedure even works under Dos, but, of course, in a limited
sense: if ToInputFile is used, the process will not actually be
started until ToInputFile is closed. Signal, Seconds and Wait of
TPipeProcess are ignored, and PID and SignalPID do not contain a
Process ID, but an internal value without any meaning to the
caller. Result will always be PIDExited. So, Status is the only
interesting field (but Result should also be checked). Since there
is no forking under Dos, ChildProc, if not nil, is called in the
main process before spawning the program. So, to be portable, it
should not do any things that would influence the process after
the return of the Pipe function.
The only portable way to use "pipes" in both directions is to call
Pipe, write all the Input data to ToInputFile, close
ToInputFile, and then read the Output and StdErr data from
FromOutputFile and FromStdErrFile. However, since the capacity of
pipes is limited, one should also check for Data from
FromOutputFile and FromStdErrFile (using CanRead, IOSelect or
IOSelectRead) while writing the Input data (under Dos, there
simply won't be any data then, but checking for data doesn't do
any harm). Please see pipedemo.pas for an example. }
procedure Pipe (var ToInputFile, FromOutputFile, FromStdErrFile:
AnyFile; const ProcessName: String; protected var Parameters:
TPStrings; ProcessEnvironment: PCStrings; var Process:
PPipeProcess; ChildProc: TProcedure); attribute (iocritical);
{ Waits for a process created by Pipe as determined in the Process
record. (Process is Dispose'd of afterwards.) Returns True if
successful. }
function WaitPipeProcess (Process: PPipeProcess): Boolean; attribute
(ignorable);
{ Alternative interface from PExecute }
const
PExecute_First = 1;
PExecute_Last = 2;
PExecute_One = PExecute_First or PExecute_Last;
PExecute_Search = 4;
PExecute_Verbose = 8;
{ PExecute: execute a chain of processes.
Program and Arguments are the arguments to execv/execvp.
Flags and PExecute_Search is non-zero if $PATH should be searched.
Flags and PExecute_First is nonzero for the first process in
chain. Flags and PExecute_Last is nonzero for the last process in
chain.
The result is the pid on systems like Unix where we fork/exec and
on systems like MS-Windows and OS2 where we use spawn. It is up to
the caller to wait for the child.
The result is the exit code on systems like MSDOS where we spawn
and wait for the child here.
Upon failure, ErrMsg is set to the text of the error message,
and -1 is returned. errno is available to the caller to use.
PWait: cover function for wait.
PID is the process id of the task to wait for. Status is the
status argument to wait. Flags is currently unused (allows
future enhancement without breaking upward compatibility). Pass 0
for now.
The result is the process ID of the child reaped, or -1 for
failure.
On systems that don't support waiting for a particular child, PID
is ignored. On systems like MSDOS that don't really multitask
PWait is just a mechanism to provide a consistent interface for
the caller. }
function PExecute (ProgramName: CString; Arguments: PCStrings; var
ErrMsg: String; Flags: Integer): Integer; attribute (ignorable);
function PWait (PID: Integer; var Status: Integer; Flags: Integer):
Integer; attribute (ignorable);