Documentation  › java.lang  › Process
 
 


  Process
  public abstract

  Inherits From:   Object
  Conforms To:   none
  Declared In:   java.lang


Class Description
 
The Runtime.exec methods create a native process and return an instance of a subclass of Process that can be used to control the process and obtain information about it. The class Process provides methods for performing input from the process, performing output to the process, waiting for the process to complete, checking the exit status of the process, and destroying (killing) the process.

The Runtime.exec methods may not work well for special processes on certain native platforms, such as native windowing processes, daemon processes, Win16/DOS processes on Microsoft Windows, or shell scripts. The created subprocess does not have its own terminal or console. All its standard io (i.e. stdin, stdout, stderr) operations will be redirected to the parent process through three streams (Process.getOutputStream(), Process.getInputStream(), Process.getErrorStream()). The parent process uses these streams to feed input to and get output from the subprocess. Because some native platforms only provide limited buffer size for standard input and output streams, failure to promptly write the input stream or read the output stream of the subprocess may cause the subprocess to block, and even deadlock.

The subprocess is not killed when there are no more references to the Process object, but rather the subprocess continues executing asynchronously.

There is no requirement that a process represented by a Process object execute asynchronously or concurrently with respect to the Java process that owns the Process object.



Class Variables
 
None declared in this class.


Instance Variables
 
None declared in this class.


Constructors
 
Process
public Process( )

No description available for this constructor.


Class Methods
 
None declared in this class.


Instance Methods
 
destroy
public abstract void destroy( )

Kills the subprocess. The subprocess represented by this Process object is forcibly terminated.


exitValue
public abstract int exitValue( )

Returns the exit value for the subprocess.


getErrorStream
public abstract InputStream getErrorStream( )

Gets the error stream of the subprocess. The stream obtains data piped from the error output stream of the process represented by this Process object.

Implementation note: It is a good idea for the input stream to be buffered.


getInputStream
public abstract InputStream getInputStream( )

Gets the input stream of the subprocess. The stream obtains data piped from the standard output stream of the process represented by this Process object.

Implementation note: It is a good idea for the input stream to be buffered.


getOutputStream
public abstract OutputStream getOutputStream( )

Gets the output stream of the subprocess. Output to the stream is piped into the standard input stream of the process represented by this Process object.

Implementation note: It is a good idea for the output stream to be buffered.


waitFor
public abstract int waitFor( ) throws InterruptedException

causes the current thread to wait, if necessary, until the process represented by this Process object has terminated. This method returns immediately if the subprocess has already terminated. If the subprocess has not yet terminated, the calling thread will be blocked until the subprocess exits.



Known Subclasses
 
None.



 
 
  dydoc
  3/10/05