Custom Query (1030 matches)

 (run-program ''prog'' args :output ''lisp-stream'' :error ''lisp-stream'')

doesn't work as expected. CCL::MONITOR-EXTERNAL-PROCESS only has the ability to watch output on a single file descriptor, and in this case it winds up watching the input side of a pipe used as the error descriptor by the external program, and output is lost.

Example:

(defun foo ()
  (with-output-to-string (out)
    (with-output-to-string (err)
      (run-program "ls" '("-l") :output out :error err)
      (format t "~& out = ~a" (get-output-stream-string out))
      (format t "~& err = ~a" (get-output-stream-string err))))
  nil)

Calling (FOO) produces the output:

out =
err =

which basically means "there was no error output, and we weren't watching standard output"

Even though this is apparently a litte obscure (I don't recall it ever having been reported), it's probably fair to call it 'major'.

Using :ERROR :OUTPUT provides a way of getting both standard and error output, but not a way of distinguishing between them.

Many standard programs (many GNU tools, including GCC) produce output in UTF-8 or some other non-empty encoding. CCL::MONITOR-EXTERNAL-PROCESS just interprets each octet it receives as a character-code; ideally, there should be some way of specifying how those octets encode characters.

Non-interactive input to external processes sometimes involves writing a lisp stream's contents to a temporary file and passing a descriptor to that file as the subprocess' standard input; similarly, there should be some way of ensuring that that input is encoded according to the external program's expectations.

How significant a problem this is may depend on how visible it is, which in turn depends on lots of factors ("locales", terminal/Emacs settings) outside of the lisp's control. It seems desirable that the lisp offer a way of doing (its part of) this right.

It was reported in ​http://clozure.com/pipermail/openmcl-devel/2008-July/008420.html that a saved CurrencyConverter application (presumably built from the trunk as of roughly the date of that message) references a DEAD-MACPTR during "early application initialization".

The current 1.2 version doesn't seem to be affected by this.