same input for interactive command in Perl script - perl

In Perl script I am using command of unit(external command) using system
but that command need some run time input from user. Every time I want to give similar input which is stored in variable.
My command is:
system("dt ci $dest_file");
after this command my script is waiting for user input,
lets say I want to give "re base" as input to this every time
How can I give fix input every time it asks?
Please help, I am working on windows 7.
I want to make script completely automated... it should not wait for user input

If you call your script like this:
perl test.pl < input.txt
It should take the content of the file as an input. ( this is working with STDIN read )

Related

How to pass integers and strings from MATLAB to a PowerShell script?

I need to automate a test. The test itself is being written (by me) in MATLAB, has 5 stages, each stage ends with setting a value to an integer (uint16_t and uint8_t) and with a message. I have to pass these 5 integers and 5 strings to a PowerShell script because Jenkins can only run a PowerShell or Python script, but I'm not entirely sure how can I achieve that. I have never used PS or done any scripting, and there isn't much on the Internet on how to even run a MATLAB script with PowerShell. (Maybe I should check batch file scripts running MATLAB scripts.)
The only option I've found so far is writing into a (temporary) file with MATLAB, then reading from it (and deleting it), it could be a .txt file, or preferably a .csv file (although using csvwrite is not recommended by Mathworks), but this isn't very reliable. Can anyone suggest other methods to pass it more directly? The MATLAB file is not a function, but it can be made to be one that has these variables as outputs. Also, it's fine if the integers are cast to another integer type.
Like #TessellatingHeckler said the way is $results = matlab.exe yourscript.
Here is an example if you want more features when launch the tests like no display windows ,run in a batch mode or wait to the end of matlab execution.
runTestMatlab (){
result=$(matlab.exe -wait -nosplash -noFigureWindows -batch TestScript.m)
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
# Error with the Matlab run
echo $result
return 1
fi
echo "$result"
return 0
}
Then you can parse the result with awk or any other tool that you want.

How to write a test to confirm that a perl script waits (or doesn't wait) for interactive user input (based on supplied options)

I have a perl script for which I would like to write a few tests. If the perl script gets supplied a specific option, the user is allowed to paste or type out multi-line input and end their input using control-d.
These are the tests I want to write:
The script (when an interactive flag is supplied) waits for (multiple lines of) input on STDIN until the user hits control-d
[this test is already implemented - but provided for completeness] The script (when a flag is supplied that indicates a redirect/pipe) consumes all input on STDIN and does not wait for control-d
The script (when no input flag is provided [interactive or redirect]) does not wait for interactive user input
Test 1 toy example
I wrote a test for test 1 that confirms input was received (it works by the parent test script printing to the child's input handle and the child modifies and prints that input back out), but that test doesn't wait for an end of input signal (e.g. control-d) (which I don't know how to send anyway). So in other words, I can confirm it receives input, but I don't know how to confirm that it waits for the user to intentionally end the input entry. I.e. How do I know that the input consumption won't stop until the user types control-d?
Here's what I have so far for test 1. I wrote a 3rd little IO::Pipe::Consumer module to be able to send input to the child process that I'm testing and I wrote a toy example of the script that allows input on STDIN from a tty.
Here is a toy version of the script I'm testing:
>perl -e 'while(<STDIN>){print("*$_")}'
test
*test
^d
>
And here is the toy test code (that I want to improve) for the above script:
>perl -e '
use IO::Pipe::Consumer;
$obj = new IO::Pipe::Consumer;
$si = $obj->getSubroutineConsumer(
sub { while(<STDIN>) print("*$_") } }
);
print $si "test\n"
'
*test
>
I thought the parent would have to print an EOF (e.g. like what you get from "control-d") to end the input in the test, but the test ends immediately even though I'm not sending any such end-of-input character. I can see that it's getting, modifying, and printing the input. Is that sufficient to confirm that the script will wait for user input (and that the user will be able to intentionally end the input) or is there something else I should do to confirm it waits for all user input until the user intends to end it?
Test 2 - done
Test 3 toy - don't know how to write it...
Even if modified input spit back out is sufficient proof of "waiting for input" for test 1, I also wish to test that a script doesn't consume input on STDIN when no input option (interactive or redirect) is provided - but since it doesn't seem to wait even when I do send it input without an end-of-input signal, how would I test that the script wouldn't hang waiting for input? Note, the script has other options for consuming redirected or piped input, so my intent is specifically to know if it's waiting on input from the tty. All of the STDIN consumption options (whether from the tty or via redirect/pipe) are optional, which is why I want to write these tests.
My manual testing shows everything works as intended. I would just like some tests to assure that behavior for the future.
IO::Pipe::Consumer
I feel like the thing I'm missing is not relevant to IO::Pipe::Consumer, so WRT that, I'll just describe it instead of paste in 30 or so lines of code... All it does is it sets a pipe to the child's STDIN and gives that handle back to the parent for it to print to. I haven't put it on cpan. I'm just experimenting to see if I can use it to write these tests.
IO::Pipe::Consumer is basically the opposite of IO::Pipe::Producer (a module I published on cpan looong ago, say 2001-ish, when I was new to perl, or programming for that matter). The main difference, aside from swapping STDIN for STDOUT and Reader with Writer (and vice versa), is that the open is open(STDIN,"<",\${$stdin_pipe}).
I thought the parent would have to print an "end-of-input" (e.g. "control-d") character to end the input in the test,
Ctrl-D doesn't produce an "end of input character"; it causes the terminal to return EOF.
I don't know what IO::Pipe::Consumer is —it's not on CPAN— but I presume it creates a pipe. Exiting the program causes the writer end of the pipe to be closed and thus cause the reader end to return EOF.
is there something else I should do to confirm it waits for all user input until the user intends to end it?
<> reads until one of the following things happen:
A line feed is encountered (returning what was read including the line feed)
EOF is encountered (returning what was read up to an including the line feed)
An error is encountered (returning false).
You can confirm it waits by putting sleep statements between what you send. Be aware that buffering may interfere.

Input argument is a file or an either content to Perl

I wrote a Perl script to convert from TEX format to JSON format.
Calling in the batch file:
perl -w C:\test\support.pl TestingSample.tex
This is working fine now.
Perl script having two types of input from another program (might be any platform/technology) one is file (*TEX) or else content (*TEX file) either this or that option.
How can I receive the full content as the input to the Perl script?
Now my Perl script is:
my $texfile = $ARGV[0]; my $texcnt = "";
readFileinString($texfile, \$texcnt);
I am trying to update:
perl -w C:/test/support.pl --input $texcnt" #Content is Input
I am receiving error message:
The command line is too long.
Could someone please advice?
First of all regarding the error you're getting:
Perl (or your shell) is complaining that your input argument is too long.
Parsing entire files as arguments to scripts is generally a bad idea anyway, for example quotation mark escaping etc. might not be handled and thus leave a wide open vulnarbility to your entire system!
So the solution to this is to modify your script so that it can take the file as an argument (if that isn't already the case) and if you really need to have an entire file's content parsed as an argument I'd really advise you to create a temporary file in /tmp/ (if on Linux) or in your %TEMP% directory on Windows and parse the file the content into the file and after that give your support.pl script the new temp file as an argument.

Sending commands to FWTools via Matlab?

I am trying to use Matlab to send commands to FWTools in order to project a bunch of .shp files.
I am able to start FWTools from Matlab but I cant figure out how to send it commands without my interaction.
So far FWTools starts and my matlab command window and acts like the FWTools shell. I type commands and it will run, but I want to be able to send them in my .m file. Once FWTools starts up, my script will not continue to the next line of code.
My code so far:
cmd = 'ogr2ogr -s_srs "EPSG:4326" -t_srs "EPSG:3006" out_sweref99tm.shp in_wgs84.shp';
system('C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe \K "d:\FWTools2.4.7\setfw.bat" ')
sprintf('%s',cmd) % try to send cmd to matlab command window aka FWTools
I also tried to put the cmd into my system call but that returned an error since it appears that I am trying to call FWTools with a super long string afterwards :(
cmd = 'ogr2ogr -s_srs "EPSG:4326" -t_srs "EPSG:3006" out_sweref99tm.shp in_wgs84.shp';
system(['C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe \K "d:\FWTools2.4.7\setfw.bat" ',cmd])
The reason I am using FWTools is that I am projecting from WGS84 to SWEREF99TM and (from my understanding) its not easy to get the final projection via Matlab's mapping toolbox. Please correct me if I am wrong as I would love to keep it to Matlab.
And if possible, I would like to stay in Matlab and not move to Python.
Thanks.
Norris
The call of C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe is not necessary.
Try this:
cmd = 'ogr2ogr -s_srs "EPSG:4326" -t_srs "EPSG:3006" out_sweref99tm.shp in_wgs84.shp';
system(['d: && cd d:\FWTools2.4.7\ && setfw.bat ',cmd])
or if you actually need to pass your parameters after the first call and not with:
system(['d: && cd d:\FWTools2.4.7\ && setfw.bat && ',cmd])
Maybe you can post a screenshot of how it looks like when you do it manually.
requested explanation:
The && operator is implicating that the following command is executed "in the next line". It's like you press enter in the cmd window and then you have to type the next command.
For example cd d:\FWTools2.4.7\ does never work directly, as the default is usually "c:". So firstly have to type d: and in the next step you change to your folder cd d:\FWTools2.4.7\

Using Expect with Perl and pipe to a file

I'm fairly new to Perl and have been searching the interwebs for documentation for what I'm trying to do. I'm not having any luck.
I have a program that outputs information to stdout with prompts throughout. I need to make a Perl script to pipe that information to a file.
I thought I could use Expect but there seems to be a problem with the pipe after the first prompt.
Here is the part of my code:
# Run program and compare the output to the BASE file
$cmd = "./program arg1 arg2 arg3 arg4 > $outfile";
my $exp = new Expect;
$exp->spawn($cmd);
BAIL_OUT("couldn't create expect object") if (! defined $exp);
$exp->expect(2);
$exp->send("\n");
For this case there is only a single prompt for the user to press "enter". This program is small and very fast - 2 seconds is plenty of time to reach the first prompt.
The output file only contains the first half of the information.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can grab the second half as well?
UPDATE:
I've verified that this works with Expect by using a simple script:
spawn ./program arg1 arg2 arg3 arg4
expect "<Return>"
send "\r"
interact
Where "< Return >" is a verbose expression that the Perl script could look for.
Note: I've tried writing my Perl script to expect "< Return >"...it makes no difference.
i.e.
$exp->expect(2, '-re', "<Return>")
Any thoughts?
UPDATE2:
Hazaah! I've found a solution to my problem...completely by accident.
So, I had a mistype in some test code I made...
$exp->expect(2);
$exp->send("\r");
$exp->expect(2);
Note the trailing expect(2)...I accidentally left that in and it worked!
So, I'm trying to understand what is happening. Unix expect does not seem work this way! It appears Expect implemented in Perl "expects" anything...not just prompts?
So, I provided expect another 2 seconds to collect stdout and I am able to get everything.
If anyone can offer some more detailed information as to what is going on here I'd love to understand what is going on.
Try sending \r instead of \n - you're trying to emulate a carriage return, not a newline, and the tty settings might not be translating them.
ALSO:
A suggestion from the Expect docs FAQ section, which seems likely given your accidental solution:
My script fails from time to time without any obvious reason. It
seems that I am sometimes loosing output from the spawned program.
You could be exiting too fast without giving the spawned program
enough time to finish. Try adding $exp->soft_close() to terminate the
program gracefully or do an expect() for 'eof'.
Alternatively, try adding a 'sleep 1' after you spawn() the program.
It could be that pty creation on your system is just slow (but this is
rather improbable if you are using the latest IO-Tty).
Standard unix/tcl expect doesn't exit in interactive mode, which could give your program enough time to finish running.
It's been a while since I've used Expect, but I'm pretty sure you need to provide something for Expect to match the prompt against:
$exp->expect( 2, 'Press enter' );
for example.