[Fwd: Re: Last item on TODO list for mc before 4.6.1]

[Roland Illig]

Leonard den Ottolander wrote:
> When the viewer uses a filter, the filtering program (e.g. gzip) can 
> return errors to stderr even before it completes.  There was a function to 
> drain and display the stderr output before the viewer starts.  I removed 
> it because it was problematic and Valgrind reported memory access 
> problems.  The whole code was a hack around popen.  I believe the right 
> solution would be to use our own popen replacement that would intercept 
> strerr properly.

I had just written one two days ago:

int pipethrough(const char *command,
                 const struct const_buffer *stdin_buf,
                 /*@out@*/ struct buffer *stdout_buf,
                 /*@out@*/ struct buffer *stderr_buf,
                 /*@out@*/ int *status);

It executes "command", which is a shell command, feeding the contents of 
"stdin_buf" into it and getting the output into two dynamically 
allocated buffers "stdout_buf" and "stderr_buf". After completion, the 
variable "status" contains the process exit status which can be examined 
using WIFEXITED and friends.

I am planning to write an extended version which does not simply fill 
buffers but uses callback routines whenever one of the streams (stdin, 
stdout, stderr) is ready.

Interested?

Roland