Pipe Input on a timer - linux

I have a program that asks for input but it takes a while to load up.
I need a bash script that will pipe out the output into a named pipe.
I need a command that will cause my echo to insert my input after the program prompts for input. This is my command right now but it pipes in the input before my prompt.
echo "R" | nc localhost 123 > fifo
This will result in the following output:
usernname#name:
R
Please enter in an input (R, Q, T):
So my command needs to "wait" until my program prompts then pipe in the input. Any ideas? This needs to be in a bash script

You can use sleep:
(sleep 3; echo "R") | nc localhost 123 > fifo
Obviously this has a race condition, and so for industrial applications you should use expect instead.

Related

How do I provide STDIN data to a J script run via jconsole.exe?

I want to run a J script, providing STDIN, and receive the output of the script with STDOUT.
I feel like I'm missing something blindingly obvious, but the help pages on using jconsole.exe are . . . terse.
My naive thought was that I could run the following in the cmd.exe shell to provide STDIN:
jconsole.exe script.ijs inputstring
While that works without the attempted STDIN:
C:\..\bin>jconsole.exe "C:\path\no-input-script.ijs"
success
C:\..\bin>
The no-input-script.ijs file is the following:
stdout 'success'
exit ''
I have the following script-with-input.ijs file:
input =: stdin ''
stdout 'input was ' , input
exit ''
When I run the following, the system hangs:
C:\..\bin>jconsole.exe "C:\path\script-with-input.ijs" xyz
When I then hit Ctrl+C, the script exits and I am left with the following:
C:\..\bin>jconsole.exe "C:\path\script-with-input.ijs" xyz
input was
C:\..\bin>
stdin reads input from STDIN until EOF (usually in *nix ^D). So your 'script-with-input.ijs' waits for user input or a pipe.
c:>jconsole.exe "script-with-input.ijs" hello
this is user input
^D
input was this is user input
What you, instead, are trying to do is read the arguments of the command. Those are stored in ARGV:
NB. script-with-input.ijs
input =: ARGV
echo input
exit''
Then:
c:>jconsole.exe "script-with-input.ijs" hello
┌────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────┐
│jconsole.exe│script-with-input.ijs│hello│
└────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────┘

Unix: What does cat by itself do?

I saw the line data=$(cat) in a bash script (just declaring an empty variable) and am mystified as to what that could possibly do.
I read the man pages, but it doesn't have an example or explanation of this. Does this capture stdin or something? Any documentation on this?
EDIT: Specifically how the heck does doing data=$(cat) allow for it to run this hook script?
#!/bin/bash
# Runs all executable pre-commit-* hooks and exits after,
# if any of them was not successful.
#
# Based on
# http://osdir.com/ml/git/2009-01/msg00308.html
data=$(cat)
exitcodes=()
hookname=`basename $0`
# Run each hook, passing through STDIN and storing the exit code.
# We don't want to bail at the first failure, as the user might
# then bypass the hooks without knowing about additional issues.
for hook in $GIT_DIR/hooks/$hookname-*; do
test -x "$hook" || continue
echo "$data" | "$hook"
exitcodes+=($?)
done
https://github.com/henrik/dotfiles/blob/master/git_template/hooks/pre-commit
cat will catenate its input to its output.
In the context of the variable capture you posted, the effect is to assign the statement's (or containing script's) standard input to the variable.
The command substitution $(command) will return the command's output; the assignment will assign the substituted string to the variable; and in the absence of a file name argument, cat will read and print standard input.
The Git hook script you found this in captures the commit data from standard input so that it can be repeatedly piped to each hook script separately. You only get one copy of standard input, so if you need it multiple times, you need to capture it somehow. (I would use a temporary file, and quote all file name variables properly; but keeping the data in a variable is certainly okay, especially if you only expect fairly small amounts of input.)
Doing:
t#t:~# temp=$(cat)
hello how
are you?
t#t:~# echo $temp
hello how are you?
(A single Controld on the line by itself following "are you?" terminates the input.)
As manual says
cat - concatenate files and print on the standard output
Also
cat Copy standard input to standard output.
here, cat will concatenate your STDIN into a single string and assign it to variable temp.
Say your bash script script.sh is:
#!/bin/bash
data=$(cat)
Then, the following commands will store the string STR in the variable data:
echo STR | bash script.sh
bash script.sh < <(echo STR)
bash script.sh <<< STR

How to make an expect script to input commands into GDB?

I want to write an Expect script that will simply input commands into GDB regardless of its output. Then I want to take certain parts of the output of GDB and extract information from it using shell commands such as grep and sed. Then I want to use this information to input more commands into GDB.
For example, I would initiate a back trace by sending the command "bt" to GDB from the expect script. Then I would grep for a word such as "pardrivr" and get the line number associated with it. Then I would input "f lineNumberOfPardrivr" into GDB. This process would be repeated until the correct information is eventually extracted.
Is this possible. If so what is the best way to go about doing this?
Thanks
My $0.02: I'd use a coprocess or named pipe under ksh/bash/zsh. Much easier. See: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/86270/how-do-you-use-the-command-coproc-in-bash
Also, consider tee'ing the output of gdb into a named pipe that you cat in another xterm. Makes it much easier to debug what your script is reading if you can see a copy of the gdb output.
Edited to add:
Still can't post comments. *sigh*
gdb in batch mode, or via a simple shell redirect, won't let us define commands on the fly based upon current gdb output. A coprocess or named pipe approach is much the same technique, but it lets us create new input dynamically at will based upon gdb's output processed through grep/sed/awk/perl/whatever. Python or Perl might be even easier to use with their facilities for regular expressions and subprocesses. E.g. (perl) open("|gdb ...")
http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/open.html
Edited again to add:
A named pipe is a FIFO (first in first out) that exists much like a file in the filesystem. It's not really a file of course. It's just something that can be used like a file. Anything that you write to it can be read back out, within the limits of the OS buffering. (Otherwise writes will block.)
FIFO's are available under Unix, Linux, & Macs, but not windows. You create them with mkfifo. Any process can write to it. Any process can read from it. From that link I posted up above:
mkfifo in out
cmd <in >out &
exec 3> in 4< out
echo data >&3
read var <&4
From my own playing around to demo this...
#in BASH
mkfifo IN OUT
#or mkfifo IN OUT ERR
gdb < IN > OUT 2>&1 &
#or gdb < IN > OUT 2> ERR &
#or gdb < IN > OUT &
exec 3> IN
exec 4< OUT
echo "help bt" >&3
while read -t 0.001 var <&4 ; do echo $var; done
echo "help stack" >&3
while read -t 0.001 var <&4 ; do echo $var; done
#don't forget to kill the gdb process when you are done...
echo "quit" >&3
while read -t 0.001 var <&4 ; do echo $var; done
I want to write an Expect script that will simply input commands into GDB regardless of its output.
For non interactive control you don't need expect as gdb has a -batch mode and is able to read (-x) commands from a file.
Moreover, as gdbreads input from stdin and produces output to stdout standard redirection might do the trick.
For example, I wrote a simple C program:
sh$ cat hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
char msg[] = "Hello world";
printf("%s\n", msg);
return 0;
}
sh$ gcc -ggdb hello.c -o hello
I'm able to "script" the gdb session like that:
sh$ gdb -q hello | awk '$2=="$1" { print "Var was #" $NF }'
br 6
r
print &msg
c
quit
EOF
warning: no loadable sections found in added symbol-file system-supplied DSO at 0x7ffff7ffa000
Var was #0x7fffffffe230

How to pause bash script from python script?

I want to pause bash script from python script, the steps look like this:
I start script writer.sh from python script reader.py.
When writer.sh outputs third line I want executing of this script to be paused using some command in reader.py.
I want to resume execution of writer.sh using some command in reader.py.
Here are those two scripts, the problem is that writer.sh doesn't pause when sleep command is executed in reader.py. So my question is, how can I pause writer.sh when it outputs string "third"? To be exact (this is my practical problem in my job) I want writer.sh to stop because reader.py stopped reading output of writer.sh.
reader.py:
import subprocess
from time import sleep
print 'One line at a time:'
proc = subprocess.Popen('./writer.sh',
shell=False,
stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
)
try:
for i in range(4):
output = proc.stdout.readline()
print output.rstrip()
if i == 2:
print "sleeping"
sleep(200000000000000)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
remainder = proc.communicate()[0]
print "remainder:"
print remainder
writer.sh:
#!/bin/sh
echo first;
echo second;
echo third;
echo fourth;
echo fith;
touch end_file;
Related question is, will using pipes on Linux pause script1, if script1 outputs lines of text, e.g. script1 | script2,
and script2 pauses after reading third line of input?
To pause the bash script, you can send the SIGSTOP signal to the PID.
If you want it to resume, you can send the SIGCONT signal.
You can get the pid of the subprocess with pid = proc.pid.
See man 7 signal

redirecting stdin _and_ stdout to a pipe

I would like to run a program "A", have its output go to the input to another program "B", as well as stdin going to intput of "B". If program "A" closes, I'd like "B" to continue running.
I can redirect A output to B input easily:
./a | ./b
And I can combine stderr into the output if I'd like:
./a 2>&1 | ./b
But I can't figure out how to combine stdin into the output. My guess would be:
./a 0>&1 | ./b
but it doesn't work.
Here's a test that doesn't require us to rewrite up any test programs:
$ echo ls 0>&1 | /bin/sh -i
$ a b info.txt
$
/bin/sh: Cannot set tty process group (No such process)
If possible, I'd like to do this using only bash redirection on the command line (I don't want to write a C program to fork off child processes and do anything complicated everytime I want to do some redirection of stdin to a pipe).
This cannot be done without writing an auxiliary program.
In general, stdin could be a read-only file descriptor (heck, it might refer to read-only file). So you cannot "insert" anything into it.
You will need to write a "helper" program that monitors two file descriptors (say, 0 and 3) in order to read from both and "merge" them. A simple select or poll loop would be sufficient, and you could write it in most scripting languages, but not the shell, I don't think.
Then you can use shell redirection to feed your program's output to descriptor 3 of the "helper".
Since what you want is basically the opposite of "tee", I might call it "eet"...
[edit]
If only you could launch "cat" in the background...
But that will fail because background processes with a controlling terminal cannot read from stdin. So if you could just detach "cat" from its controlling terminal and run it in the background...
On Linux, "setsid cat" should do it, roughly. But (a) I could not get it to work very well and (b) I really do not have time for this today and (c) it is non-standard anyway.
I would just write the helper program.
[edit 2]
OK, this seems to work:
{ seq 5 ; sleep 2 ; seq 5 ; } | /bin/bash -c 'set -m ; setsid cat ; echo HELLO'
The set -m thing forces bash to enable job control, which apparently is needed to prevent the shell from redirecting stdin from /dev/null.
Here, the echo HELLO represents your "program A". The seq commands (with the sleep in the middle) are just to provide some input. And yes, you can pipe this whole thing to process B.
About as ugly and non-portable a solution as you could ask for...
A pipe has two ends. One is for writing, and that which gets written appears in the other end, which is for reading.
It's a pipe, not a T or Y junction.
I don't think your scenario is possible. Having "stdin going to input of" anything doesn't make sense.
If I understand your requirements correctly, you want this set up (ASCII art to the fore):
o----+----->| A |----+---->| B |---->o
| ^
| |
+------------------+
with the additional constraint that if process A closes up shop, process B should be able to continue with the input stream going to B.
This is a non-standard setup, as you realize, and can only be achieved by using an auxilliary program to drive the input to A and B. You end up with some interesting synchronization issues but it will all work remarkably well as long as your messages are short enough.
The plumbing necessary to achieve this is notable - you'll need two pipes, one for the input to A and the other for the input to B, and the output of A will be connected to the input of B as well.
o---->| C |---------->| A |----+---->| B |---->o
| ^
| |
+--------------------------+
Note that C will be writing the data twice, once to A and once to B. Note, too, that the pipe from A to B is the same pipe as the pipe from C to A.
To make the given test case work you have to while ... read from the controlling terminal device /dev/tty inside a sh -c '...' construct.
Note the use of eval (could it be avoided here?) and that multi-line commands on input> will fail.
echo 'ls; export var=myval' | (
stdin="$(</dev/stdin)"
/bin/sh -i -c '
eval "$1";
while IFS="" read -e -r -p "input> " line; do
history -s "${line}"
eval "${line}";
done </dev/tty
' argv0 "${stdin}"
)
input> echo $var
For a similar problem and the use of named pipes see here:
BASH: Best architecture for reading from two input streams
This can't be done exactly as shown, but to perform your example you can make use of cat's ability to join files together:
cat <(echo ls) - | /bin/sh
(You can do -i, but then you'll have to have another process kill the /bin/sh, as your attempts to Ctrl-C and Ctrl-D out will fail.)
This assumes that you want to pass in your piped input and then accept from stdin. You can also make it so that it does something after stdin is done, or on both sides -- but it won't merge input character-by-character or line-by-line.
This seems to do what you want:
$ ( ./a <&-; cat ) | ./b
(It's not clear to me if you want a to get input...this solution sends all input to b)
Of course, in this case the inputs to b are strictly ordered: all of the output of a
is sent to b first, then a terminates, then input goes to b. If you want things
interleaved, try:
$ ( ./a <&- & cat ) | ./b

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