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<a name="Line-Oriented-Interaction"></a>
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<hr size="1">
<a name="Line-Oriented-Interaction-1"></a>
<h4 class="subsubsection">2.6.4.1 Line Oriented Interaction</h4>

<p>Within this general pattern, more specific styles of interaction are
possible. In the simplest one to explain first, the result returned by
the function is always a data structure of the form
<a name="index-command-line-4"></a>
<code>(<var>state</var>,(<var>command lines</var>,<var>prompts</var>))</code>, wherein the
fields have these interpretations.
</p>
<dl compact="compact">
<dt> <var>state</var></dt>
<dd><p>is a tree incorporating any data in any format that the application
needs to remember from one invocation to the next.
</p></dd>
<dt> <var>command lines</var></dt>
<dd><p>is a list of character strings that are piped to the standard input
stream of a separately spawned process. The process may persist from one
invocation of the function to the next, or may be spawned each time.
</p></dd>
<dt> <var>prompts</var></dt>
<dd><p>is a non-empty list of character strings containing a suffix of the text
expected from the standard output stream of the process as a result of
sending the command lines to it.
</p></dd>
</dl>

<p>On each iteration, <code>avram</code> sends the command line character strings
<a name="index-spawning-processes-1"></a>
to a separately spawned process, with line breaks between them if there
are more than one command. If a process remains from the previous iteration that
has not terminated itself, the list of command lines is sent to the same
process. If no such process already exists, the first string in the list
of command lines is treated as a shell command and used to spawn the
<a name="index-exp_005fpopen-1"></a>
process (using the <code>exp_popen</code> library function), and the remaining
strings are sent to the newly spawned process.
</p>
<p>Normally processes spawned with commands that invoke interactive command
line interpreters of their own, such as <code>bash</code>, <code>ftp</code> or
<code>bc</code>, will persist indefinitely unless the command causing them
to exit is issued or some other event kills them. Processes spawned with
non-interactive commands, such as <code>ls</code> or <code>pwd</code>, will
terminate when the last of their initial output has been received.
</p>
<p>In the case of processes that persist after being spawned, <code>avram</code>
needs some way of knowing when to stop waiting for more output from them
so that it doesn&rsquo;t get stuck waiting forever. This purpose is served by
the <var>prompts</var> field. This field could contain a single string
holding the last thing the process will send before becoming quiescent,
such as the strings <code>bash$ </code> or <code>ftp&gt; </code> in the above
examples. Alternatively, a sequence of more than one prompt string can
be used to indicate that the corresponding sequence of lines must be
detected. An empty string followed by <code>ftp&gt; </code> would indicate that
the <code>ftp&gt; </code> prompt is expected to be immediately preceded by a line
<a name="index-prompts"></a>
break. There is also the option of using prompt strings to indicate a
pattern that does not necessarily imply quiescence, but is a more
convenient point at which to stop reading the output from the process.
</p>
<p>For processes spawned with commands that do not start their own
interactive command line interpreters, such as <code>ls</code> or
<code>pwd</code>, it may be preferable to read all the output from them
until they terminate. To achieve this effect, the list of prompt strings
should contain only the single string containing only the single
<code>EOF</code> character (usually code 4) or any other character that is
certain not to occur in the output of the process. This technique is
based on the assumption that the process was spawned originally with the
command in question, not that such a command is sent to an existing
shell process.
</p>
<p>In any case, when enough output has been received from the process, it
is collected into a list of received strings including the prompt
strings at the end (if they were received), and the function is applied
to the pair <code>(<var>state</var>,<var>received strings</var>)</code>. If the cycle is
to continue, the result returned by the function will include a new
state, a new list of command lines, and a new list of prompt strings. A
result of <code>nil</code> will cause the computation to terminate.
</p>
<p>There are some unusual situations that could occur in the course of line
oriented interaction, and are summarized as follows.
</p>
<ul>
<li> If the process terminates before any pattern matching the prompt
strings is received from it, all of the output from the process up to
the point where it terminated is collected into the <var>received
strings</var> list and passed to the function. This situation includes cases
where the process terminates immediately upon being spawned, but not
abnormal completion of the <code>exp_popen</code> library function, which is
a fatal error. This feature of the interface is what allows <code>EOF</code>
to be used for collecting all the output at once from a non-interactive
command.
</li><li> If the list of <var>command lines</var> is empty, and no process
currently exists due to a previous iteration, the effect is the same as
if the process terminates unexpectedly before outputting anything. I.e.,
the function is applied to a pair containing an empty list of received
strings. There is no good reason for an application to get into this
situation.
</li><li> If the list of <var>command lines</var> is empty but a process persists
from a previous iteration, no output is sent to it, but receiving from
it proceeds normally. This feature of the interface could be used
effectively by applications intended to process the received data in
<a name="index-deadlock"></a>
parts, but will cause deadlock if the process is already quiescent.
</li><li> All character strings have to consist of lists of valid
representations of non-null characters according to <a href="Character-Table.html#Character-Table">Character Table</a>, or else there will be some fatal error messages.
</li><li> If the list of <var>prompt strings</var> contains only the empty
string, <code>avram</code> will not wait to receive anything from the process,
but will proceed with the next iteration immediately. If this effect is
intended, care must be taken not to confuse the empty list
of <var>prompt strings</var> with the list containing the empty string. The former
indicates character oriented interaction, which is explained next.
</li></ul>

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<td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="avram.html#Top" title="Cover (top) of document">Top</a>]</td>
<td valign="middle" align="left">[<a href="avram_toc.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents">Contents</a>]</td>
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