From: Jan Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2006-09-04T11:23:04+09:00
Subject: Re: Invoking External Program

On 9/3/06, brian.kejser@protexis.com <brian.kejser@protexis.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I've been able to launch an external program and read standard output
> using the following code.
>
> IO.popen("program.exe", 'r+') do |io|
>   io.puts "command line input"
>   io.close_write
>   puts io.read
> end
>
> 1) How would I add a timeout to the command (e.g. 10 seconds)?
> 2) How would I check the error level (e.g. 0, 1, etc)?
> 3) How would I read standard error?

Just quick, uncomplete answers (from .exe I guess you are on windows):

1. try using Timeout.timeout [1] but I'm not sure how successful
you'll be - when the program blocks then you probably won't be able to
do anything. When the timeout elapses, you'd need to kill the process.

2. use $? [2]

3. look for popen3 [3] or redirect stderr to stdout or a file. I'm not
sure whether popen3 works on windows.

[1] http://ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Timeout.html#M001924
[2] http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/QuickRef.html#18
[3] http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/open3/rdoc/index.html