Run a compound shell command from Java/Groovy

Question

I got stuck trying to run a compound shell command from a Groovy script. It was one of those commands where you separate with "&&" so that the 2nd command never runs if the 1st one fails. For whatever reason I couldn't get it to work. I was using:

println "custom-cmd -a https://someurl/path && other-cmd -f parameter".execute([], new File('/some/dir')).text

The shell kept misinterpreting the command throwing errors like "custom-cmd -f invalid option" It was like it was ignoring the "&&" in between. I tried using a semi-colon as well but was not lucky. I tried using straight Java APIs Runtime.getRuntime().exec() and splitting the command into an array. I tried wrapping the command in single quotes and giving it to '/bin/sh -c' but nothing works.

How do you run a compound shell command from Java? I know I've done this in the past but I cannot figure it out today.

Possible duplicate of [how to call shell commands from groovy correctly](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12512919/how-to-call-shell-commands-from-groovy-correctly). you can not use "shellism" like && < | as commands. use `-c` and pass it as _one_ param (easiest done by string array, if the quoting gets tricky) — cfrick, Dec 29 '15 at 10:28

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 29 '15 at 10:03

2

With groovy, the list form of execute should work:

def out = ['bash', '-c', "custom-cmd -a https://someurl/path && other-cmd -f parameter"].execute([], new File('/some/dir')).text

Of course you may want to use the consumeProcessOutput method on process, as if the output is too large, calling text may block

answered Dec 29 '15 at 10:03

tim_yates

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This works! Thank you! It was not working when I passed /bin/sh as the executable but bash seems to work. Also I did not know that List also supports the execute method! Nice! – Cliff Dec 29 '15 at 19:12

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

0

Try something like:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /c \"start somefile.bat && start other.bat && cd C:\\test && test.exe\"");

Runtime.getRuntime().exec() can be used without splitting the commands into an array.

see https://stackoverflow.com/a/18867097/1410671

EDIT:

Have you tried using a ProcessBuilder? This seems to work on my OSX box:

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    ProcessBuilder builder = new ProcessBuilder( "/bin/sh", "-c", "echo '123' && ls" );

    Process p=null;
    try {
        p = builder.start();
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
        System.out.println(e);
    }


    Scanner s = new Scanner( p.getInputStream() );
    while (s.hasNext())
    {
        System.out.println( s.next() );
    }
    s.close();
}

edited May 23 '17 at 12:31

Community

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answered Dec 29 '15 at 03:24

randal4

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As explained above, I already tried something like this. (I'm on OSX) I used /bin/sh -c 'cmd && othercmd' – Cliff Dec 29 '15 at 03:29
Also, I've tried both splitting and not splitting the cmd. Usually splitting on white space works better but not in this case. – Cliff Dec 29 '15 at 03:31

Run a compound shell command from Java/Groovy

2 Answers2

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