Execute a command in Linux using Java and fetch the output

Question

I am using Groovy to execute commands on my Linux box and get back the output, but I am not able to use | pipes somehow (I think) or maybe it is not waiting for

Answer 1

The pipe | is a feature of a shell like bash. To use a pipe you need to run a shell, like

"/bin/bash", "-c", "uname -a | awk '{print $2}'"

To use ProcessBuilder with redirection you can do

public static void main(String... args) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
    final String cmd = "uname -a | awk '{print $1 \" \" $3}'";
    System.out.println(cmd + " => " + run(cmd));
}

private static String run(String cmd) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
    final ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("/bin/bash", "-c", cmd);
    pb.redirectErrorStream();
    final Process process = pb.start();
    final InputStream in = process.getInputStream();
    final byte[] bytes = new byte[1024];
    final ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();

    // you must read the output as the program runs or it can stall.
    for (int len; (len = in.read(bytes)) > 0;)
        baos.write(bytes, 0, len);
    process.waitFor();
    return baos.toString(); // assuming the default char encoding is ok.
}

prints

uname -a | awk '{print $1 " " $3}' => Linux 2.6.18-274.3.1.el5