Using bash commands from PB?

[John Duchek]

Is it possible to issue a bash command from pb and get a return? For example, is there a way to get a current directory using 'pwd' and get a return of '/home/john' ?
If there is I would really like to know how. I could use that kind of function often.

Thanks,
John

[bbanelli]

Is it possible to issue a bash command from pb and get a return? For example, is there a way to get a current directory using 'pwd' and get a return of '/home/john' ?
If there is I would really like to know how. I could use that kind of function often.

Thanks,
John

Something like this?

Code: Select all

*MemoryID = AllocateMemory(100)
pwd = RunProgram("pwd","",GetCurrentDirectory(),#PB_Program_Open|#PB_Program_Read)
ReadProgramData(pwd,*MemoryID,100)
Debug PeekS(*MemoryID,-1,#PB_Ascii)

[broozar]

out of curiosity, any reason why you chose ReadProgramData over ReadProgramString? Since -String does not make you mess with buffers, peeks and formats/encodings, it seems to me to be the safer method. am I wrong?

[bbanelli]

out of curiosity, any reason why you chose ReadProgramData over ReadProgramString? Since -String does not make you mess with buffers, peeks and formats/encodings, it seems to me to be the safer method. am I wrong?

Because nobody expects the Spanish inquisition!

That "safer" method can cost you some time and nerves if there is an ambiguous output of the program whose output you expect. So, IMO, it is definitely much safer to use "Data" method, since it will either work as its "String" function, or actually produce proper results when needed. And it really isn't so hard to use, is ti?

[Danilo]

Code: Select all

*MemoryID = AllocateMemory(100)
pwd = RunProgram("pwd","",GetCurrentDirectory(),#PB_Program_Open|#PB_Program_Read)
ReadProgramData(pwd,*MemoryID,100)
Debug PeekS(*MemoryID,-1,#PB_Ascii)

Aren't Linux programs able to output Unicode characters to the console? Or is the console output UTF8?

[bbanelli]

Code: Select all

*MemoryID = AllocateMemory(100)
pwd = RunProgram("pwd","",GetCurrentDirectory(),#PB_Program_Open|#PB_Program_Read)
ReadProgramData(pwd,*MemoryID,100)
Debug PeekS(*MemoryID,-1,#PB_Ascii)

Aren't Linux programs able to output Unicode characters to the console? Or is the console output UTF8?

To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention, but you are probably right, it should.

Code: Select all

bubba@ubuntu-x86:~$ echo $LANG
en_US.UTF-8

Code: Select all

*MemoryID = AllocateMemory(100)
pwd = RunProgram("pwd","",GetCurrentDirectory(),#PB_Program_Open|#PB_Program_Read)
ReadProgramData(pwd,*MemoryID,100)
Debug "No flag: " + PeekS(*MemoryID,-1)
Debug "ASCII flag: " + PeekS(*MemoryID,-1, #PB_Ascii)
Debug "UTF-8 flag: " + PeekS(*MemoryID,-1, #PB_UTF8)

[broozar]

now who said it was safer i made the comment because i noticed that my output of "999" was returning nonsense when using Data+PeekI (result: funny long row of numbers), then i tried Data+PeekS with no format parameter (result: empty string), then Data+PeekS with UTF8 (proper result), so then I thought "... hang on a minute, why not use -String to begin with?", and that's how it came about.

do you think it is required/a good idea to parse the LANG env variable before interpreting the output, so you can set Ascii or UTF8 before using PeekS?

[ts-soft]

do you think it is required/a good idea to parse the LANG env variable before interpreting the output, so you can set Ascii or UTF8 before using PeekS?

Is a good idea, but "normally", linux use only utf-8!

[bbanelli]

now who said it was safer i made the comment because i noticed that my output of "999" was returning nonsense when using Data+PeekI

Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong, but stdin, stdout and stderr are always FILE pointer types in return value. I think you cannot expect PeekI to return proper value in that case.

do you think it is required/a good idea to parse the LANG env variable before interpreting the output, so you can set Ascii or UTF8 before using PeekS?

Question prior to this would be is $LANG variable defined standard in all Linux console environments?

[John Duchek]

Thank you all for the discussion. The code works great. However, I don't understand parts of it.
Is there someplace where this approach is discussed so I could read more about it?

Thanks,
John

[John Duchek]

Never mind...I found what I needed. I was not aware of the RunProgram(). slick.
Again, thanks,
John