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Hi,
I'm writing a program which reads changes STDIN to a text file, forks and execs the commads in there. It works and execs the commands but I'm struggling to find how to recognise the end of the file. I have tried running this in a while (!EOF) loop but i'm not really sure if this is right and if so around which bits it should exist. Should it just be around the exec segment or should it be around the entire program?
I'd really appreciate some guidance
Many Thanks
forg
I guess this is dependent on what functions you are using.
Are you actually having a problem, or just looking for an opinion? I doubt you actually want the entire program inside a while (!EOF) loop...but maybe...
I guess I didn't really mention my problem. I don't know how to recognise the end of file so I always end up in a loop with the output of "unrecognised command" because it is obviously still reading the file for input but there is nothing there. I need a way to get the program to recognise when there is nothing else in the input file.
Thank you
Forg
Maybe you mean "I guess it is" instead of "it is obviously"?Quote:
Originally Posted by forgery
The paranoid (and foolproof) method is to use stat or whatever system dependent function you have to get the actual length of the file in bytes and then keep track.
The more normative (and often successful) method would be to just use a function that recognizes EOF, which most of them do.
UNLESS you mean the "file" is not a real file on disk but rather your redirection of stdin.
Ok, thanks
the file is a real file so that's fine. So how do I recognise EOF then? If EOF then set a flag? Then would I change STDIN back to the keyboard? Or is it a way I'm not thinking?
This is where i'm pretty stumped
Many Thanks
forg
1) depends how you are reading from the file. EG. fread() will return 0 if there is nothing left.Quote:
Originally Posted by forgery
2) depends how you took STDIN away.
I'm simply opening a file descriptor which is the input file
Assiging the file to stdin
Running the code to fork, exec and run the commands.
It then carries on running like carriage return is forever being entered, which I assume is because the file is empty.
By "It" you mean:Quote:
Originally Posted by forgery
1) fread()
2) some C function
3) some function
4) some C
5) this thread
I'm not using fread in anyway. STDIN is set to the file. The file contains commands on each line e.g
ls -l
pwd
The program goes through this file running the commands. Once it has ran out of commands to run, the program just prints like it is recieving a carriage return which is because the rest of the file is empty.
How? and even better -- why do that like this? If you are doing like a learning experiment, cool, otherwise I'd say that method could be unwieldy and unorthodox.Quote:
Originally Posted by forgery
1. read a FAQ about using EOF as a loop condition (you should not)
2. feof() function returns the eof-flag after the read failed, EOF is a constant that on most compilers == -1
3. check the return value of the function you use to read from the stream, read the man page to learn which return value indicates the end of file