Get back the output of os.execute in Lua

by

If you have io.popen, then this is what I use:

function os.capture(cmd, raw)
  local f = assert(io.popen(cmd, 'r'))
  local s = assert(f:read('*a'))
  f:close()
  if raw then return s end
  s = string.gsub(s, '^%s+', '')
  s = string.gsub(s, '%s+$', '')
  s = string.gsub(s, '[\n\r]+', ' ')
  return s
end

If you don’t have io.popen, then presumably popen(3) is not available on your system, and you’re in deep yoghurt. But all unix/mac/windows Lua ports will have io.popen.

(The gsub business strips off leading and trailing spaces and turns newlines into spaces, which is roughly what the shell does with its $(...) syntax.)

More Related Contents:

  1. How can I create a secure Lua sandbox?
  2. How do you copy a Lua table by value?
  3. Why does Lua’s length (#) operator return unexpected values?
  4. How to get number of entries in a Lua table?
  5. Safely remove items from an array table while iterating
  6. Print all local variables accessible to the current scope in Lua
  7. How to get list of directories in Lua
  8. ESP8266 NodeMCU Running Out of Heap Memory
  9. How do I run an executable using Lua?
  10. How to dump a table to console?
  11. How do I de-obfuscate a Lua script?
  12. Lua find a key from a value
  13. “main” function in Lua?
  14. Easiest way to make lua script wait/pause/sleep/block for a few seconds?
  15. What does LUA acronym stand for?
  16. Returning the index of a value in a Lua table
  17. Difference between . and : in Lua
  18. Sort points in clockwise order?
  19. NSURLErrorDomain error code -999 in iOS
  20. Split string in Lua?
  21. Generating uniform random numbers in Lua
  22. Call a function by an external application without opening a new instance of Matlab
  23. What is the standard (or best supported) big number (arbitrary precision) library for Lua?
  24. Lua math.random not working
  25. Casting between void * and a pointer to member function
  26. How to fix “NSURLErrorDomain error code -999” in iOS
  27. How can I embed Lua in Java?
  28. What is the difference between pairs() and ipairs() in Lua?
  29. Convert JSON String to Lua Table?
  30. luaSocket HTTP requests always respond with a redirect (301 or 302)

Leave a Comment