__pmprocessexec(3) - Linux manual page

NAME | C SYNOPSIS | CAVEAT | DESCRIPTION | SEE ALSO | DIAGNOSTICS | COLOPHON

PMPROCESSEXEC(3)          Library Functions Manual          PMPROCESSEXEC(3)

NAME         top

       __pmProcessAddArg,  __pmProcessUnpickArgs,  __pmProcessExec - process
       execution support

C SYNOPSIS         top

       #include "pmapi.h"
       #include "libpcp.h"

       int __pmProcessAddArg(__pmExecCtl_t **handle, const char *arg);
       int __pmProcessUnpickArgs(__pmExecCtl_t **handle, const char
       *command);
       int __pmProcessExec(__pmExecCtl_t **handle, int toss, int wait);

       cc ... -lpcp

CAVEAT         top

       This documentation is intended for internal Performance Co-Pilot
       (PCP) developer use.

       These interfaces are not part of the PCP APIs that are guaranteed to
       remain fixed across releases, and they may not work, or may provide
       different semantics at some point in the future.

DESCRIPTION         top

       Within the libraries and applications of the Performance Co-Pilot
       (PCP) these routines are provide a convenient and safe alternative to
       system(3) for executing commands in a separate process.

       Use __pmProcessAddArg to register the executable and command
       arguments in order.  handle should be set to NULL before the first
       call to __pmProcessAddArg for a particular command execution and it
       will be set to an opaque pointer to data structures that are
       manipulated in __pmProcessAddArg, __pmProcessExec and the related
       __pmProcessPipe(3) routines.

       When called with handle set to NULL arg is treated as the name of the
       command to be executed and subsequent calls (if any) are for the
       arguments to that command.  The name of the command can be a full
       pathname, or the name of an executable that can be found on the
       current $PATH as per the rules of execvp(2) that is used by
       __pmProcessExec.

       __pmProcessUnpickArgs is a convenience wrapper to assist conversion
       of code that assumes the command is a shell command that has been
       prepared for use with system(3) or popen(3) in existing code.  The
       arguments in command are picked off one-by-one and used to call
       __pmProcessAddArgs.  The parser is simple, as the routine is designed
       for simple shell command syntax, where arguments are separated by one
       or more spaces but embedded spaces within an argument are allowed if
       the arguement is enclosed in single or double quotes.  More advanced
       shell syntax like escape characters and input-output redirection are
       not recognized.

       Once all the command name and arguments have been registered calling
       __pmProcessExec uses a fork(2) and execvp(2) sequence to execute the
       command.

       The argument toss may be used to assign some or all of the standard
       I/O streams for the command to /dev/null - specifically toss is
       either PM_EXEC_TOSS_NONE to keep all I/O streams the same as the
       parent process, else the bit-wise or of PM_EXEC_TOSS_STDIN and/or
       PM_EXEC_TOSS_STDOUT and/or PM_EXEC_TOSS_STDERR to reassign stdin,
       stdout and stderr respectively.  PM_EXEC_TOSS_ALL is a convenience
       macro equivalent to PM_EXEC_TOSS_STDIN | PM_EXEC_TOSS_STDOUT |
       PM_EXEC_TOSS_STDERR.

       The wait argument should be PM_EXEC_WAIT if __pmProcessExec should
       wait for completion of the command and harvest the exit status, else
       PM_EXEC_NOWAIT in which case __pmProcessExec returns immediately
       (effectively running the command in the background).

       Nested calling of __pmProcessExec and/or __pmProcessPipe(3) is not
       allowed.  Once __pmProcessAddArg is called with handle set to NULL to
       start the registration and execution sequence any attempt to start a
       second registration sequence will be blocked until the first one is
       completed by calling __pmProcessExec or __pmProcessPipe(3).

SEE ALSO         top

       execvp(2), fork(2), __pmProcessPipe(3), popen(3), system(3) and
       waitpid(3).

DIAGNOSTICS         top

       If successful __pmProcessAddArg returns 0.  Other conditions are rare
       (e.g. alloc failure) and are indicated by a return value that can be
       decoded using pmErrStr(3).

       __pmProcessUnpickArgs returns 0 on success.  In the case of an
       unterminated string, a message is generated and PM_ERR_GENERIC is
       returned.  Other return values less than 0 indicate a more serious
       error and the value can be decoded using pmErrStr(3).

       The return status from __pmProcessExec is more complicated.  If
       either PM_EXEC_NOWAIT is specified, or the command completes with an
       exit status of 0, the return value is 0.  Return values less than 0
       indicate a more serious error and the value can be decoded using
       pmErrStr(3).  If the command was executed, but did not exit with
       status of 0 then the return value is an encoding of the waitpid(2)
       status as follows: 2000 if something unknown went wrong, else if 1000
       + signal number of the command was killed or stopped by a signal,
       else the exit status of the command.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the PCP (Performance Co-Pilot) project.
       Information about the project can be found at ⟨http://www.pcp.io/⟩.
       If you have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       pcp@groups.io.  This page was obtained from the project's upstream
       Git repository ⟨https://github.com/performancecopilot/pcp.git⟩ on
       2018-02-02.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2018-02-02.)  If you discover any
       rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
       there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Performance Co-Pilot                 PCP                    PMPROCESSEXEC(3)

Pages that refer to this page: __pmprocesspipe(3)