Question

Can someone help me convert the following code into code that instead has two NSTasks for “cat” and “grep”, showing how the two can be connected together with pipes? I suppose I would prefer the latter approach, since then I no longer have to worry about quoting and stuff.

NSTask *task;
task = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task setLaunchPath: @"/bin/sh"];

NSArray *arguments;
arguments = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"-c",
             @"cat /usr/share/dict/words | grep -i ham", nil];
[task setArguments: arguments];
[task launch];

Update: Note that cat and grep are here just meant as (lousy) example. I still want to do this for commands that make more sense.

Answer 1

Use a instance of NSTask for each program and connect their standard inputs/outputs with NSPipe:

NSPipe *pipe = [[NSPipe alloc] init];
NSPipe *resultPipe = [[NSPipe alloc] init];

NSTask *task1 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task1 setLaunchPath: @"/bin/cat"];
[task1 setStandardOutput: pipe];
[task1 launch];

NSTask *task2 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task2 setLaunchPath: @"/bin/grep"];
[task2 setStandardInput: pipe];
[task2 setStandardOutput: resultPipe];
[task2 launch];

NSData *result = [[resultPipe fileHandleForReading] readDataToEndOfFile];