UNIXProcess system: drives CPU busy

[daswartz]

We need to call UNIX shell commands from a running Smalltalk image. We can use the system: method on UNIXProcess, but for the entire time the shell is running, we see smalltalk (esnx) processes using 100% of a cpu.

How can we invoke a shell script, wait for it to complete, and acquire its exit/return code, under UNIX without driving the CPU crazy?

We are currently using VAST 7.0 on Solaris 10.

Doug Swartz

[daswartz]

We need to call UNIX shell commands from a running Smalltalk image. We can use the system: method on UNIXProcess, but for the entire time the shell is running, we see smalltalk (esnx) processes using 100% of a cpu.

Additional info:

If we change the UNIXProcess>>system: method to insert a Delay, ie:

| process |

process := self execute: aString.
process isNil ifTrue: [^nil].
[process isComplete] whileFalse: [(Delay forMilliseconds: 10) wait].
^process exitCode


Smalltalk no longer uses 100% of a cpu, but we no longer get the shell scripts return value. The exitCode for the UNIXProcess is always 0.