exec : Java Glossary

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exec
Runtime.getRuntime().exec( "myprog.exe" );
will spawn an external process (usually a program written in some language other than Java) that runs in parallel with the Java execution. In  W95, W98, Me, NT, W2K, XP and W2003, you must use an explicit *.exe or *.com extension on the parameter. In  Vista it will still work even if you leave it off. Be careful to include it, or your code will mysteriously fail on the older operating systems.

It is also best to fully qualify executable names so that the system executable search path is irrelevant and so you don’t pick up some stray program off the path with the same name.

Starting with Java version 1.5, exec has been replaced by ProcessBuilder. start. You should likely not be using exec for new programs. However, studying exec is useful to understand old programs that use exec and to understand why ProcessBuilder is designed the way it is. They have many things in common, especially the way command interpreters and internal commands must be handled and they both use the same Process class. So read about exec first, then enjoy the improved ProcessBuilder.
Exec vs Threads ProcessBuilder
Overloaded exec Threads to Tend the Child
Command Interpreter Spawning java.exe
Simplifications Spawning javac.exe
launching a browser Java Web Start Spawning
Unix Desktop Spawning
Communicating With The Spawned Process Learning More
Applets Links
Gotchas

EXEC vs Threads

There are two ways to get parallel execution, spawn a separate job with exec, or use threads. Which is best for your problem?

Threads join the queue of processes to execute. The OS (Operating System) schedules them on the next available CPU (Central Processing Unit) core. So if you have 7 threads and 4 cores, you can have 4 of those threads running fully simultaneously, not just interleaved. Your threads compute just like independent jobs, though the OS can do proprietary clever things to treat them differently.

When you exec/fork, you spin off a separate job than runs independently in a separate address space. The spawner can fail and the child keeps going. The child can be written in a different language. The child have very limited ability to communicate with the spawner. In contrast a thread has access to the shared address space directly which makes interthread communication much easier.

You can also use Thread pools where you logically want to have hundreds of threads, but don’t want the overhead.

Overloaded exec

There are also many overloaded forms of exec() including this most general one: The second argument can be a String [] and can be used to set environment variables. In the second case, C:\\SomeDirectory specifies a directory for the process to start in. If, for instance, your process saves files to disk, then this form allows you to specify which directory they will be saved in.

Command Interpreter

To run a *.BAT, *.CMD, *.html *.BTM or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) you must invoke the command processor with these as a parameter. These extensions are not first class executables in Windows. They are input data for the command processor. You must also invoke the command processor when you want to use the < > | piping options, Here’s how, presuming you are not interested in looking at the output:
exec only understands xxx.exe and parameters. It knows nothing about program names without the *.exe explicitly mentioned, | pipes, < redirection >, % environment parameter subsitution, or *.bat, *.cmd or *.html files. Further, commands such as attrib, cls, copy del, dir, format, move and rename are not *.exe files. They are internal commands to the command interpreter. For all those things you must spawn a command interpreter/shell script with an explicit *.exe extension (at least in W98, Me, NT, W2K, XP, W2003, Vista, W2008, W7-32, W7-64, W8-32, W8-64, W2012, W10-32 and W10-64, in other OS es, you need a fully qualified executable name) and pass it the name of your executable or internal command as a parameter. Similarly in Linux, if you want to use any of the commands internal to the command processor that don’t have corresponding independent excutables such as alias, enable, export, pwd, unset, while…, you must spawn bash or other shell and feed it commands as parameters.
There is an exception. In XP, W2003, Vista, W2008, W7-32, W7-64, W8-32, W8-64, W2012, W10-32 and W10-64 you can invoke a bat file so long as you use the explicit .bat extension, without resorting to a command interpreter.

Simplifications

There is also Marty Hall’s Exec class, which simplifies the process of using exec and tends to make the command more stable. Currently, only the exec(String cmd) is supported, with a workaround for exec( String cmd, null, String dir)

Unix

For Unix/Linux you must spawn the program that can process the script, e.g. bash. However, you can run scripts directly with exec if you do two things:
  1. Start the script with #!bash or whatever the interpreter’s name is.
  2. Mark the script file itself with the executable attribute.
Alternatively  I suspect you will have more success if you pass the entire command line as a single parameter to the shell interpreter, at least if you have any redirection or piping.

Communicating With The Spawned Process

exec returns a Process object that you can use to control, monitor or wait for the background process. This example shows you how you can wait for the child, rather than letting it run asynchronously. This example does not show the many possible other separate Threads you might use to:
  1. Spawn the child (and continue processing).
  2. Write the child’s input from System.in with Process. getOutputStream(). Note the stream is named relative to the parent, not the child.
  3. Read the child’s output from System.out with Process. getInputStream(). Note the stream is named relative to the parent, not the child. You must do this if there are more that a few line of output, or the child will stall, constipated with unread output.
  4. Read the child’s output from System. err with Process. getErrorStream().
  5. One each to read the child’s output from files, sockets etc.
  6. Wait for the child with Process.waitFor () once you have all the hooks set up.
  7. Timer to kill the child and interrupt the waitFor() thread with  Thread.interrupt() if the child takes too long.
You need to start all these possible Threads after you create the Process object, but before you call waitfor.

Process.getOutputStream lets you write out data that will be used as input to the process. Don’t forget to include any \n and \r characters the process is expecting. Process.getInputStream lets you read in the data that your process squirted out to stdout.

The other cruder way to get the output from the execed program is to spawn a command processor and use the > or 2> redirection operator to direct stdout or stderr to a file. When the spawned program completes, read the file. Or simply read and write files both in your mother and child. If batching up this way is acceptable, it is much simpler and much less likely to go south with thread complexities.

If you wait for the Process, you might want to do it on some thread other than the main AWT (Advanced Windowing Toolkit) event processing one, i.e. create a new Thread, otherwise your app will not be able to process AWT events while you wait.

ON the Java side you may need to read and write to the child with separate threads to avoid deadlocks. The deadlock occurs if you try to read and/or write more than a certain amount (empirically it is around 4K). The deadlock (a Mexican standoff freeze) happens when the child wants you to listen when you are still trying to feed it more, or when the child is hungry for input and you won’t send it any more until it has spoken.

Applets

You can’t use exec from an unsigned Applet otherwise you would be able to wreck havoc on the client machine by spawning FORMAT C:. If you need to do that, you will need to have a signed Applet with high privilege.

If you are in an Applet and all you are trying to is get a browser to render a page, you don’t need exec. Simply use getAppletContext().showDocument( new URL (http://domain/file.html));

Gotchas

ProcessBuilder

Starting with Java version 1.5 there is a better way of handling exec called ProcessBuilder. It has a number of advantages over exec. Here is how 

Threads to Tend the Child

Here is an example of using Threads to communicate with the child process to feed it input and read its output. This example does not show a separate System. err reader or a timeout timer, but this example should be enough to get you started.

You need code like this, or the child will freeze, the sender unable to empty it buffers and the receiver starved of data because the sender is still holding onto it. Don’t be seduced by the fact code using a single thread will often work for small amounts of data.

Here is the source code for the dummy boomerang.exe utility I used to test the above code. I used Jet to compile in down to an exe file.

On the C/C++ side, in your child program, you could use getc to read the output from Java’s BufferedWriter and putc to write the input to Java’s BufferedReader. One you have the communication working, replace the C/ C++ I/O with something fancier.

Keep in mind that using large buffers will delay releasing the output to the other party until a buffer full of data has been accumulated. This can delude you into thinking things are not working when they are just fine. You must also use flush() to ensure the other party has access to all the data recently written. If your child in written in Python, use the -u option to turn off buffering. This will ensure the mother Java program sees the output of the child as soon as possible.

Spawning java.exe

I mentioned earlier that exec is used to start non-Java apps, though in principle you could spawn a copy of java.exe. However, there are cleaner and faster ways to get that same effect.

Spawning javac.exe

There are a three basic techniques to spawn a copy of the Java compiler: JavaCompiler, sun.tools.javac.Main, or spawning javac.exe with ProcessBuilder or exec.

Java Web Start Spawning

If you have set up the association between .jnlp to javaws.exe, you can spawn a shell such an cmd.exe or tcc.exe with the name of the .jnlp file as the parameter. If you have not, you must spawn javaws.exe with the name of the .jnlp file as the parameter. The current javaws.exe is automatically on the path, via the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/App Paths.

Desktop Spawning

In Java version 1.6 or later there is a simplified exec technique. You cannot communicate with the child task.

Learning More

Oracle’s Javadoc on exec package : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on Process class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on ProcessBuilder class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on Desktop class : available:

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