diff --git a/content/code/command-test.md b/content/code/command-test.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..719221b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/code/command-test.md @@ -0,0 +1,146 @@ ++++ +title = "Running a Command and Saving Its Output to File in Rust" +date = 2023-09-01 + +[taxonomies] +tags = ["random", "rust", "command", "log"] ++++ + +I had an issue: I needed to run a command inside Rust, but I needed that all +its output should go to a file, and I needed to check if there were certain +phrases in it. + + + +So, first step: Create a script that could "replicate" the output of a command, +with the expected strings to be captured: + +```bash +#!/usr/bin/env bash + +for loop in {1..1000} +do + echo "Hello, I'm a script!" + echo "I write stuff in the output." + echo "Everything should go to a file." + echo "But also, you need to capture warnings:" + + if (( $loop%7 == 0)); then + echo "WARNING: This is a warning" + echo " It continues if the line starts with spaces" + echo " And keeps going till there are no more spaces-prefixes" + fi + + if (( $loop%8 == 0)); then + # ERR is just to make sure we find it easily in the logs + echo "ERR: Sometimes, I also write in stderr!" >&2 + echo "ERR: Just for funsies!" >&2 + fi + + echo "Like this." + echo "Then you're good to go." + echo "" +done +``` + +What this script does is to print a message over 1,000 times, and sometimes it +will display a "WARNING" text -- which is the special output I need to capture -- +and sometimes it will print things to stderr. + +For the code, what we need to do is: + +1. Spawn the command; +2. Take the stdour (and stderr) from it. +3. Spawn a thread that will keep listening to the output, doing the search, + and writing everything to a file (our log). +4. The thread returns the list of captured messages, which we can get back + when we `.join()` it. +5. Since I was expecting stderr to be smaller enough, I did the capturing of + it after the thread completes (which would also close the file, so we can + be sure that we can open it again without any issues). + +The first step is quite easy: Just use `std::process::Command` and use the +`.spawn()` function to create the `Child` controller. + +For the second step, we use the `Child` structure and use `.take()` on both +stdout and stderr. This will give us the file descriptor for both (think about +them as `File`s). + +The third step is quite easy, actualy: `std::thread::spawn()` to create a +thread, and just read the content from the file descriptors from step 2. In +this, I used `BufReader`, which gives access to reading the content line by +line, which is way easier than reading to a buffer and processing it. + +```rust +use std::fs::{File, OpenOptions}; +use std::io::{BufRead, BufReader, Read, Write}; +use std::path::PathBuf; +use std::process::Command; + +fn main() { + // this requires always running with `cargo run` + let base = PathBuf::from(env!("CARGO_MANIFEST_DIR")); + let the_script = base.join("src").join("the_script.sh"); + + let mut cmd = Command::new("bash") + .arg(the_script) + .stdout(std::process::Stdio::piped()) + .stderr(std::process::Stdio::piped()) + .spawn() + .unwrap(); + + // capture both the stdout and stderr as File structs (actually FDs, but basically the same + // thing) + let stdout = cmd.stdout.take().unwrap(); + let mut stderr = cmd.stderr.take().unwrap(); + + // spawn a thread to keep capturing and processing the stdout. + let writer_pid = std::thread::spawn(move || { + let reader = BufReader::new(stdout); + let lines = reader.lines(); + let mut log_file = File::create("script.log").unwrap(); + let mut in_warning = false; + let mut result = Vec::new(); + + for line in lines { + let line = line.unwrap(); + log_file.write(line.as_bytes()).unwrap(); + log_file.write(b"\n").unwrap(); // 'cause lines() eat it + + if line.starts_with("WARNING:") { + in_warning = true; + } else if line.starts_with(" ") && in_warning { + result.push(line); + } else if in_warning { + in_warning = false; + } + } + + result + }); + + // run the command till it finishes + cmd.wait().unwrap(); + + // ... and wait till the thread finishes processing the whole output. + let warnings = writer_pid.join().unwrap(); + + // this is somewhat a hack: Instead of spawning a thread for stderr and trying to fight with + // stdout for the lock to be able to write in the log file, we do this after the thread ends + // (which closes the file) and then open it again and write the stderr in the end. We do this + // 'cause we expect that the stderr is way smaller than stdout and can fit in memory without + // any issues. + let mut buffer = String::new(); + stderr.read_to_string(&mut buffer).unwrap(); + + let mut file = OpenOptions::new().append(true).open("script.log").unwrap(); + file.write(buffer.as_bytes()).unwrap(); + + // This is purely for diagnostic purposes. We could put the warnings in another file, or pass + // it along to something else to process it. Here, we just display them. + // Same for stderr: Since we already put them in the file, this is used just to make sure we + // are capturing the errors without looking at the file. + println!("Warnings:\n{:?}", warnings); + println!("ERR:\n{:?}", buffer) +} +```