[fpc-pascal]popen problems...

[Martyn Ranyard]

Hi all,

   I am writing a menu program in FPC, gpl'd so I'm asking here for 
comments, as I don't quite understand why my calls are no longer working.

   I used this call in a completely different menu program, and it worked 
nicely.  Can't remember if it was a different version of FPC, but I'm now 
running on "Free Pascal Compiler version 1.0.6 [2002/04/30] for i386".  I 
just don't quite get it.  I did write this heap of ****, but it was quite a 
while ago, and it was by trial and error - I even ended up with zombies in 
an early revision because I used close() instead of pclose(). :(

The call :

ExecAndDisplay('/home/mranyard/newmenuserv/usr/sbin/smeserver/share2iso.sh 
/usr/share/ToBurn /tmp/duplicate.iso ASK');

or the call :

ExecAndDisplay('/bin/sh -c 
''/home/mranyard/newmenuserv/usr/sbin/smeserver/share2iso.sh 
/usr/share/ToBurn /tmp/duplicate.iso ASK''');

gives :

An unhandled exception occurred at 0x08069D5F :
Unknown Run-Time error : 029
   0x08069D5F
   0x08074E0F
   0x080480B0

and yes, the file share2iso.sh exists and has execute rights - It executes 
if I copy the command out into the command prompt.

and now for the heap (remember - early code, please don't be too nasty, 
also, I know it does no more than shell() would do, but there is a similar 
function yet to be made that will do more with the output.) :

Procedure ExecAndDisplay(Command: String);
Var
   TheFile : File;
   Ch      : Char;
   TheBuff : String;
   EndOfFile : Boolean;
Begin
   EndOfFile := False;
   popen(TheFile, Command, 'r');
   Repeat
     If not Eof(TheFile) then
     Begin
       If not Eof(TheFile) then
       Begin
         TheBuff := '';
         Repeat
           If Eof(TheFile) then
             Ch := #10
           else
             Try
               BlockRead(Thefile, Ch, 1)
             Except
               EndOfFile := True;
               Ch := #10
             End;
           If Ch = #13 then Ch := #10;
           if Ch <> #10 then TheBuff := TheBuff + Ch
         Until Ch = #10;
         Writeln(TheBuff);
       End
     End
   Until Eof(TheFile) or EndOfFile;
   pClose(TheFile)
End;


Martyn Ranyard
Free Software Advocate

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