AutoIt Scripting for an External CLI Program - eac3to.exe - autoit

I am attempting to design a front end GUI for a CLI program by the name of eac3to.exe. The problem as I see it is that this program sends all of it's output to a cmd window. This is giving me no end of trouble because I need to get a lot of this output into a GUI window. This sounds easy enough, but I am begining to wonder whether I have found one of AutoIt's limitations?
I can use the Run() function with a windows internal command such as Dir and then get the output into a variable with the AutoIt StdoutRead() function, but I just can't get the output from an external program such as eac3to.exe - it just doesn't seem to work whatever I do! Just for testing purposesI I don't even need to get the output to a a GUI window: just printing it with ConsoleWrite() is good enough as this proves that I was able to read it into a variable. So at this stage that's all I need to do - get the text (usually about 10 lines) that has been output to a cmd window by my external CLI program into a variable. Once I can do this the rest will be a lot easier. This is what I have been trying, but it never works:
Global $iPID = Run("C:\VIDEO_EDITING\eac3to\eac3to.exe","", #SW_SHOW)
Global $ScreenOutput = StdoutRead($iPID)
ConsoleWrite($ScreenOutput & #CRLF)
After running this script all I get from the consolWrite() is a blank line - not the text data that was output as a result of running eac3to.exe (running eac3to without any arguments just lists a screen of help text relating to all the commandline options), and that's what I am trying to get into a variable so that I can put it to use later in the program.

Before I suggest a solution let me just tell you that Autoit has one
of the best help files out there. Use it.
You are missing $STDOUT_CHILD = Provide a handle to the child's STDOUT stream.
Also, you can't just do RUN and immediately call stdoutRead. At what point did you give the app some time to do anything and actually print something back to the console?
You need to either use ProcessWaitClose and read the stream then or, you should read the stream in a loop. Simplest check would be to set a sleep between RUN and READ and see what happens.
#include <AutoItConstants.au3>
Global $iPID = Run("C:\VIDEO_EDITING\eac3to\eac3to.exe","", #SW_SHOW, $STDOUT_CHILD)
; Wait until the process has closed using the PID returned by Run.
ProcessWaitClose($iPID)
; Read the Stdout stream of the PID returned by Run. This can also be done in a while loop. Look at the example for StderrRead.
; If the proccess doesnt end when finished you need to put this inside of a loop.
Local $ScreenOutput = StdoutRead($iPID)
ConsoleWrite($ScreenOutput & #CRLF)

Related

Instrumenting R programs using intel-pin

I am instrumenting R programs using pinatrace.so tool to generate trace for read and write memory instructions. What I observe is that multiple #eof statements get printed in the trace file at different places(which should have been actually get printed only at the end of the trace). Also, the immediate next line after #eof gets distorted and is not printed properly.
I am invoking R shell and my R program using the following command:
../../../pin -follow_execv -t obj-intel64/pinatrace.so -- /home/R-3.5.3./bin/R -f hello.R
The trace file gets printed as shown:
0 0x7ffc812cd1c8
1 0x7ffc812cd1c8
0 0x7f7f8555ee78
#eof
f6971ce8
1 0x6f4518
0 0x7ffc171a0b70
.....
.....
1 0x7ffc6da8f078
0 0x7f7c38786e78
#eof
ffc171a07c8
0 0x6f4e30
0 0x6ff918
What is wrong with this instrumentation?
When Pin is invoked with the follow_execv knob, it will create a new copy of itself in every child process that is created. The new copy is not aware that another copy is running in the parent or at all. See here:
If -follow_execv is enabled and the user has not registered to get a notification, Pin will be injected into child/exec-ed process with the same command line as of current process.
If the Pintool wasn't created with -follow_execv in mind, all copies of the Pintool will normally write to the same file. This will create strange artifacts such as what you're seeing, as different processes write to the same file and terminate it while other processes are writing after the terminator.
The simplest solution is to add a PID suffix to the file, another option is to use the Follow Child Process API (linked above) to determine which subprocess is the actual R program you want to trace. Finally, R may have support for instrumentation which you could use to instrument the program itself.

How to scroll up in Vim buffer with R (using Nvim-R)

I'm a happy user of the Nvim-R plugin, but I cannot find out how to scroll up in the buffer window that the plugin opens with R. Say for instance that I have a large output in console, but I cannot see the top of it - how do I scroll up to see this? In tmux for instance there's a copy mode that quite handily lets you do this, but how is this done in the R buffer?
An example below where I'm very curious to see what's on the line above the one begining with "is.na(a)...". How can this be achieved?
I have scoured the documentation found here, but without luck.
The answer is apparently to use Ctrl+\ Ctrl+n according to this answer on the bugreports for NVim-R.
Here's what my output looks like when I output mtcars:
When I hit Ctrl+\ Ctrl+n, I can move the cursor and I get line numbers:
To get back to interactive, I just use i, the same way I normally would.
Apparently, if you are using neovim, then you can add let R_esc_term = 0 in your ~/.vimrc file and you can then use the escape key, but if you don't use neovim, you are stuck using the two ctrl commands ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
As pointed out by ZNK, it is about switching to normal mode in Vim's terminal. This, however, can easily fail due to cumbersome keybinding. If such is the case, remap the default keybinding to something reasonable, say, by putting this in your .vimrc:
tnoremap jk <C-\><C-n>
This works for me in Linux running Vim 8.0 in terminal (e.g. does not require Neovim). As you can see, I use 'jk' to switch from insert to normal mode. One can use Esc instead of jk, however, this makes me unable to use up arrow to retrieve command line history as been reported elsewhere.

Issue in executing a batch file using PeopleCode in Application engine program

I want to execute a batch file using People code in Application Engine Program. But The program have an issue returning Exec code as a non zero value (Value - 1).
Below is people code snippet below.
Global File &FileLog;
Global string &LogFileName, &Servername, &commandline;
Local string &Footer;
If &Servername = "PSNT" Then
&ScriptName = "D: && D:\psoft\PT854\appserv\prcs\RNBatchFile.bat";
End-If;
&commandline = &ScriptName;
/* Need to commit work or Exec will fail */
CommitWork();
&ExitCode = Exec("cmd.exe /c " | &commandline, %Exec_Synchronous + %FilePath_Absolute);
If &ExitCode <> 0 Then
MessageBox(0, "", 0, 0, ("Batch File Call Failed! Exit code returned by script was " | &ExitCode));
End-If;
Any help how to resolve this issue.
Best bet is to do a trace of the execution.
Thoughts:
Can you log on the the process scheduler you are running this on and execute the script OK?
Is the AE being scheduled or called at run-time?
You should not need to change directory as you are using a fully qualified path to the script.
you should not need to call "cmd /c" as this will create an additional shell for you application to run within, making debuging harder, etc.
Run a trace, and drop us the output. :) HTH
What about changing the working directory to D: inside of the script instead? You are invoking two commands and I'm wondering what the shell is returning to exec. I'm assuming you wrote your script to give the appropriate return code and that isn't the problem.
I couldn't tell from the question text, but are you looking for a negative result, such as -1? I think return codes are usually positive. 0 for success, some other positive number for failure. Negative numbers may be acceptable, but am wondering if Exec doesn't like negative numbers?
Perhaps the PeopleCode ChDir function still works as an alternative to two commands in one line? I haven't tried it for a LONG time.
Another alternative that gives you significant control over the process is to use java.lang.Runtime.exec from PeopleCode: http://jjmpsj.blogspot.com/2010/02/exec-processes-while-controlling-stdin.html.

AutoIt: Send("{DOWN}") not working

I am running an "autoit3.chm" file. When it runs, I would like to send a down key arrow but it doesn't work:
$file = FileGetShortName("C:\Users\PHSD100-SIC\Desktop\AutoIt3.chm")
Run(#ComSpec & " /c start " & $file)
WinWaitActive("AutoIT Help")
Send("{DOWN}")
Well, you're just waiting for the wrong Window Title... Try WinWaitActive("AutoIt Help") and it will work... Your "T" must be a "t"...
To find this out, you just need to check your script output and after your CHM-File has been opened you'll see that your script is still running. But you would have expected it to execute the Send(...) and then terminate. So your script must still be waiting for the expected window to appear. Which will lead you to double check your window title, probably you'll directly copy the window title with the AutoIt Window Info Tool, and this shows your mistake. Correct it. Viola, be happy =)
Besides: You don't need to run a Command-Prompt first, you can call ShellExecute($file) directly instead.
If you use the AutoIt Window Info tool, it helps with these issues, and it's also good practice to debug with ConsoleWrite(...)s.
For example, a simple one would be as before. However, you should probably use timeouts or variables and use the return for success/fail.
WinWaitActive("Window")
ConsoleWrite("Success")
Send("{DOWN}")
ConsoleWrite("Success")
Use following syntax for down key enter
Send("{DOWN 2}")
and similar for Up key enter
Send("{UP 2}")

How to make a non-blocking pipe from the command-line in Solaris?

I'm trying to write a lua script that reads input from other processes and analyzes it. For this purpose I'm using io.popen and it works as expected in Windows, but on Unix(Solaris) reading from io.popen blocks, so the script just waits there until something comes along instead of returning immediately...
As far as I know I can't change the functionality of io.popen from within the script, and if at all possible I would rather not have to change the C code, because then the script will then need to be bound with the patched binary.
Does that leave me with any command-line solutions?
Ok got no answers so far, but for posterity if someone needs a similar solution I did the following more or less
function my_popen(name,cmd)
local process = {}
process.__proc = assert(io.popen(cmd..">"..name..".tmp", 'r'))
process.__file = assert(io.open(name..".tmp", 'r'))
process.lines = function(self)
return self.__file:lines()
end
process.close = function(self)
self.__proc:close()
self.__file:close()
end
return process
end
proc = my_popen("somename","some command")
while true
--do stuf
for line in proc:lines() do
print(line)
end
--do stuf
end
Your problems seems to be related to buffering. For some reason the pipe is waiting for some data to be read before it allows the opened program to write more to it, and it seems to be less than a line. What you can do is use io.popen(cmd):read"*a" to read everything. This should avoid the buffering problem. Then you can split the returned string in lines with for line in string.gmatch("[^\n]+") do someting_with(line) end.
Your solution consist in dumping the output of the process to a file, and reading that file. You can replace your use or io.popen with io.execute, and discard the return value (just check it's 0).

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