[PATCH] wpa_cli: Don't buffer stdout.

[Ben Greear]

On 06/09/2017 09:21 AM, Paul Stewart wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 6:27 AM, Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com <mailto:greearb at candelatech.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     On 06/09/2017 05:46 AM, Slava Monich wrote:
>
>         On 08/06/17 23:21, greearb at candelatech.com <mailto:greearb at candelatech.com> wrote:
>
>             From: Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com <mailto:greearb at candelatech.com>>
>
>             I am trying to read from a wpa_cli process using a perl script,
>             and it appears that wpa_cli was buffering output and so my script
>             would not see events properly.  This patch apepars to fix it.
>
>             Signed-off-by: Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com <mailto:greearb at candelatech.com>>
>
>
>         Another way to fix this problem is to allocate a pty (pseudo terminal) and connect the output of the child process to that, to turn on line buffering in
>         the stdio library [1]. Don't know how to do that from perl though...
>
>         It's a bit more complicated but once you learn how to do that, you no longer need to modify the program you are spawning in order to pull the output
>         from it line by line.
>
>         [1]: http://rachid.koucha.free.fr/tech_corner/pty_pdip.html <http://rachid.koucha.free.fr/tech_corner/pty_pdip.html>
>
>
>     My fix seems a whole lot simpler than what you propose, but thanks for the suggestion!
>
>
> How about running "stdbuf -oL wpa_cli ...?"  Since you're running an exec from perl, that seems like an even more trivial change.

Well, my patch is already in my tree, so I'm OK either way.  I posted the patch more
to help other people in the future who may be more constrained on the tools they
can use and/or have no idea something like stdbuf exists.

I've never heard of stdbuf before, so that is another good trick to try to remember
next time something like this happens.

Thanks,
Ben


-- 
Ben Greear <greearb at candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com