I'm trying to use Java's ProcessBuilder class to execute a command that has a pipe in it. For example:
ls -l | grep foo
However, I get an error:
ls: |: no such file or directory
Followed by:
ls: grep: no such file or directory
Even though that command works perfectly from the command line, I can not get ProcessBuilder to execute a command that redirects its output to another.
Is there any way to accomplish this?
This should work:
ProcessBuilder b = new ProcessBuilder("/bin/sh", "-c", "ls -l| grep foo");
To execute a pipeline, you have to invoke a shell, and then run your commands inside that shell.
ls /dev/sd* IOW, ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("/bin/sh", "-c", "ls /dev/sd*"); works great, whereas ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder("ls", "/dev/sd*"); did not work. Guessing it has something to do with vararg interpretation of the * in the string... Seems like a bug to me. Could also be because of the "special" /dev device, not sure.
ls '/dev/sd*' then that wouldn't work either.Since Java 9, there’s genuine support for piplines in ProcessBuilder.
So you can use
List<String> result;
List<Process> processes = ProcessBuilder.startPipeline(List.of(
new ProcessBuilder("ls", "-l")
.inheritIO().redirectOutput(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.PIPE),
new ProcessBuilder("grep", "foo")
.redirectError(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.INHERIT)
));
try(Scanner s = new Scanner(processes.get(processes.size() - 1).getInputStream())) {
result = s.useDelimiter("\\R").tokens().toList();
}
to get the matching lines in a list.
Or, for Windows
List<String> result;
List<Process> processes = ProcessBuilder.startPipeline(List.of(
new ProcessBuilder("cmd", "/c", "dir")
.inheritIO().redirectOutput(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.PIPE),
new ProcessBuilder("find", "\"foo\"")
.redirectError(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.INHERIT)
));
try(Scanner s = new Scanner(processes.get(processes.size() - 1).getInputStream())) {
result = s.useDelimiter("\\R").tokens().toList();
}
These examples redirect stdin of the first process and all error streams to inherit, to use the same as the Java process.
You can also call .redirectOutput(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.INHERIT) on the ProcessBuilder of the last process, to print the results directly to the console (or wherever stdout has been redirected to).
inheritIO() at the first command, is to set stdin and stderr to INHERIT. Since it has the side effect of also setting stdout to INHERIT, the subsequent redirectOutput is used to set it back to PIPE. This is still simpler than .redirectInput(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.INHERIT) .redirectError(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.INHERIT)
.inheritIO().redirectOutput(ProcessBuilder.Redirect.PIPE) only for the first command of the chain. And only if you really want to inherit stdin.The simplest way is to invoke the shell with the command line as the parameter. After all, it's the shell which is interpreting "|" to mean "pipe the data between two processes".
Alternatively, you could launch each process separately, and read from the standard output of "ls -l", writing the data to the standard input of "grep" in your example.
