Unix Shell background processing


 
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# 1  
Old 09-27-2010
Unix Shell background processing

So I made my own unix shell, but i want to make a background process when using the & appended to the end, so far most of the commands seem to work (except cd, but thats another story)
right now here is what I have got.

Im thinking maybe I shouldn't be using switch and maybe switch it to something else, and Im also unsure of how to actually CHECK to see if theirs an &, because im not sure if my parsearg function will do the trick

thanks

Last edited by Mercfh; 09-28-2010 at 06:54 PM..
# 2  
Old 09-27-2010
Rather than using your own ParseArgs function, C has a built-in function called "getopt". It is a lot cleaner and meant for parsing command line arguments. (getopt(3): Parse options - Linux man page)
# 3  
Old 09-27-2010
Oh....well crap.
Oh well I mean the parsing function works....
I checked with some extra debugging to make sure it's parsing and it is, however Im just not so sure how to do a background process, but after re-looking at my code...i can def. find the & just by cycling through the parse function again and checking for an &......

However Im still clueless as to what to do for background processing.

I tried to checkfor &...but keep getting a seg fault, i tried a for loop but it wouldnt work either. any ideas?

Last edited by Mercfh; 09-28-2010 at 06:54 PM..
# 4  
Old 09-27-2010
If you can now properly parse out the ampersand, I would suggest forking a process, daemonizing it, then executing whatever shell command is needed.
# 5  
Old 09-27-2010
Well if I could get that while loop to run id be able to get the & out....but for some reason i get a seg fault in the commented out section of the code....
# 6  
Old 09-27-2010
[edit] hang on

---------- Post updated at 04:04 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:00 PM ----------

It could be crashing because you don't necessarily have 20 arguments. in which case you'll be feeding strcmp either garbage or NULL, either of which would cause it to crash. You'll need to remember how many arguments parseargs found(maybe put it through its return value instead of 'void'?)

In any case I don't think strcmp will do what you want. It returns 0 when the two strings are exactly the same, meaning, it'll only match on a line with no newlines containing nothing but &. I think you want strstr or strchr instead, see their man pages.

---------- Post updated at 04:08 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:04 PM ----------

Code:
    switch(pid)
    {
        case -1:  
            cout << "DEBUG:Fork Failure" << endl;
            exit(-1);
            break;

        case  0:
            execvp(cmd[0], cmd);
            
            if(execvp(cmd[0], cmd) == -1)
            {
                cout << "Command Not Found" << endl;
                exit(0);
            }
            break;
   
        default:  
            wait(NULL);
            cout << "DEBUG:Child Finished" << endl;
            break;
    }

I'm surprised this even compiled, a break in the default section is mandatory in some common compilers.

Imagine case 0 without the break. If execvp() fails and doesn't catch the error it might keep going, and print "DEBUG: child finished" because the case statements don't tell it where to end, just where to begin. But with the break, it will leave that section of code entirely like you expected it to do.
# 7  
Old 09-27-2010
EDIT WOOT IT WORKS.
check dis out
Code:
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <stdlib.h> 

using namespace std;

bool ParseArg(char* cmnd, char* cmd[], char input[],bool BG)
{
		
        cout << "myshell> ";
        cin.getline(input,50);
	cmnd = strtok(input, " ");
	int i = 0;

	while(cmnd != NULL)
	{
	    
	    cmd[i] = cmnd;
	    if(strcmp(cmd[i], "&") == 0){
//Debug	    cout << "& found";
	    cmd[i] = NULL;
	    return true;
	}
	    
//Debug	    cout << cmd[i] << " ";
	    i++;
	    cmnd = strtok(NULL, " ");
	}
	return false;
}

void Clean(char* cmd[])
{
//Clean Array
        for(int a=0; a < 40; a++)
        {
             cmd[a] = NULL;
        }
}

void Execute(char* cmd[])
{
    pid_t pid;
    pid = fork();
    switch(pid)
    {
        case -1:  
            cout << "DEBUG:Fork Failure" << endl;
            exit(-1);
        case  0:
            execvp(cmd[0], cmd);
            
            if(execvp(cmd[0], cmd) == -1)
            {
                cout << "Command Not Found" << endl;
                exit(0);
            }
   
        default:  
            wait(NULL);
            cout << "DEBUG:Child Finished" << endl;
    }
    
}

int main()
{
   char* cmnd;
   char* cmd[40];
   char input[50]; 
   bool BG = false;

	

   while(cmd[0] != NULL)
   {
    	Clean(cmd);
   	BG = ParseArg(cmnd, cmd, input, BG);
	cout << BG;
   	if(strcmp(cmd[0], "exit") == 0 || strcmp(cmd[0], "quit") == 0 )
   	{
             break;
   	}
	else
	{
            Execute(cmd);
	}
	
   }

   return 1;

}

It returns a bool & when it finds one, then removes it. I checked with some debug statements but it works and removes the & correctly so it can do the statements normally.

Problem is now......getting background process to run.......which im derping on bigtime

here is a copy of the output, notice the 0 next to DEBUG, and the 1 when & is found. it means the Bool BG is turned on, when it finds an &.

I

myshell> ls -a
. .. a.out fork.c Hello .hi shell shell.c
0DEBUG:Child Finished
myshell> ls -l &
total 36
-rwxr-xr-x 1 matt matt 8435 2010-09-26 20:43 a.out
-rw-r--r-- 1 matt matt 943 2010-09-26 20:44 fork.c
drwxr-xr-x 2 matt matt 4096 2010-09-27 02:13 Hello
-rwxr-xr-x 1 matt matt 8292 2010-09-27 18:06 shell
-rw-r--r-- 1 matt matt 1570 2010-09-27 18:06 shell.c
1DEBUG:Child Finished
myshell>

Last edited by Mercfh; 09-28-2010 at 06:57 PM..
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