in reply to Windows alternative to IO::Pty

I just need to be able to write commands to the program and read from it.

See Problems with IPC::Run module on Windows XP

IPC::Run is cross platform, although IPC::Open3 is usually easier on linux, as it uses pipes instead of IPC::Run's sockets. There are a few other


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  • Comment on Re: Windows alternative to open2() or IO::Pty

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Re^2: Windows alternative to open2() or IO::Pty
by azredwing (Sexton) on Aug 25, 2010 at 07:41 UTC
    Thanks for this - very helpful. Unfortunately, turns out the program I'm interfacing with is expecting a (psuedo)tty.. is there any way to do this in Windows? (IPC::Run says "no".)
      Glib is cross-platform, and here is a good example of using it with a Pty.

      And yes, the pipe reading thru Glib's methods works on Win32.

      #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; # by Phil Letschert on gtk2-perl maillist #It is common behaviour that the C library uses isatty(3) to decide if + stdout #is line-buffered or block-buffered. When reading from a pipe to an ex +ternal #command the output is block-buffered, which explains the reported beh +aviour. #Solution is using a pseudo-terminal and connect the watcher to it, fo +llowing is #a complete example: use Glib; use IO::Pty; my $pty = IO::Pty->new; my $cmd = "top -d .5"; my $pid; unless ($pid = fork) { # child process die "problem spawning program: $!\n" unless defined $pid; use POSIX (); POSIX::setsid or die "setsid failed: $!"; my $tty = $pty->slave; my $tty_fd = $tty->fileno; open STDIN, "<&$tty_fd" or die $!; open STDOUT, ">&$tty_fd" or die $!; open STDERR, ">&STDOUT" or die $!; close $pty; close $tty; exec $cmd; } my $main_loop = Glib::MainLoop->new; my $watcher; $watcher = Glib::IO->add_watch( fileno( $pty ), ['in', 'hup'], \&callb +ack); $main_loop->run; sub callback { if ( $pty->eof ) { Gtk2::Helper->remove_watch( $watcher ); close( $pty ); } else { my $line = $pty->getline; print $line; } }
      If you need to read and write to it, look at this usage: (only quickly tested :-) )
      #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Glib; use IO::Pty; my $pty = IO::Pty->new; my $cmd = "top"; my $pid; unless ($pid = fork) { # child process die "problem spawning program: $!\n" unless defined $pid; use POSIX (); POSIX::setsid or die "setsid failed: $!"; my $tty = $pty->slave; my $tty_fd = $tty->fileno; open STDIN, "<&$tty_fd" or die $!; open STDOUT, ">&$tty_fd" or die $!; open STDERR, ">&STDOUT" or die $!; exec $cmd; } my $main_loop = Glib::MainLoop->new; my $watcher; $watcher = Glib::IO->add_watch( fileno( $pty ), ['in', 'hup'], \&callb +ack); syswrite( $pty, 'l',16); syswrite( $pty, "\n",16); syswrite( $pty, 't',16); syswrite( $pty, "\n",16); syswrite( $pty, 'm',16); syswrite( $pty, "\n",16); $main_loop->run; sub callback { if ( $pty->eof ) { Gtk2::Helper->remove_watch( $watcher ); close( $pty ); } else { my $line = $pty->getline; print $line; } }

      I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
      Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh