This is probably a stupid question, but how can I execute a shell command from my Cocoa app?
I have the command as a string "command", but can easily manipulate data as needed.
There is no need to get a returned output value.
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1also see this question: stackoverflow.com/questions/412562/…kent– kent2009-09-25 12:40:35 +00:00Commented Sep 25, 2009 at 12:40
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1possible duplicate of Execute a terminal command from a Cocoa appoutis– outis2012-06-23 20:01:08 +00:00Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 20:01
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3 Answers
NSTask is pretty easy to do this with. For a synchronous call, you can use something like this fragment:
NSString *path = @"/path/to/executable";
NSArray *args = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:..., nil];
[[NSTask launchedTaskWithLaunchPath:path arguments:args] waitUntilExit];
The -waitUntilExit call makes sure it finishes before proceeding. If the task can be asynchronous, you can remove that call and just let the NSTask do it's thing.
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If you just want to run something and don't care about the output or return code (for example, you want to touch a file), you can just do
system("touch myfile.txt");
Easy as that.
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Peter Hosey
Be very, very careful with
system and popen. It's easy to introduce a vulnerability by letting characters through to the shell that it will consider special. NSTask and fork/exec are much safer.Using the NSTask class, your program can run another program as a subprocess and can monitor that program’s execution.
