Capturing stdout when calling Runtime.exec

Question

When experiencing networking problems on client machines, I'd like to be able to run a few command lines and email the results of them to myself. I've found Runtime.exec will allow me to execute arbitrary commands, but Collecting the results in a String is more interesting. I realize I could redirect output to a file, and then read from the file, but my spidey sense is telling me there's a more elegant way of doing it. Suggestions?

Accepted Answer

You need to capture both the std out and std err in the process. You can then write std out to a file/mail or similar.

See this article for more info, and in particular note the `StreamGobbler` mechanism that captures stdout/err in separate threads. This is essential to prevent blocking and is the source of numerous errors if you don't do it properly!

Capturing stdout when calling Runtime.exec

Solution

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