Question

I’m trying to make a NSTask running a command like this:

ps -clx | grep ‘Finder’ | awk ‘{print $2}’

Here is my method

- (void) processByName:(NSString*)name {
    NSTask *task1 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
    NSPipe *pipe1 = [NSPipe pipe];
    [task1 waitUntilExit];
    [task1 setLaunchPath: @"/bin/ps"];
    [task1 setArguments: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"-clx", nil]];
    [task1 setStandardOutput: pipe1];

    NSTask *task2 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
    NSPipe *pipe2 = [NSPipe pipe];
    [task2 setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/grep"];
    [task2 setArguments: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"'Finder'", nil]];
    [task2 setStandardInput:pipe1];
    [task2 setStandardOutput: pipe2];

    NSTask *task3 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
    NSPipe *pipe3 = [NSPipe pipe];
    [task3 setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/grep"];
    [task3 setArguments: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"'{print $2}'", nil]];
    [task3 setStandardInput:pipe2];
    [task3 setStandardOutput: pipe3];

    NSFileHandle *file = [pipe3 fileHandleForReading];

    [task1 launch];
    [task2 launch];
    [task3 launch];

    NSData *data;
    data = [file readDataToEndOfFile];

    NSString *string;
    string = [[NSString alloc] initWithData: data encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];

    NSLog(@"Result: %@", string);
}

But the result is just

Result:

What am I doing wrong?

EDIT

- (void) processByName:(NSString*)name {
    NSTask *task1 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
    NSPipe *pipe1 = [NSPipe pipe];
    [task1 waitUntilExit];
    [task1 setLaunchPath: @"/bin/ps"];
    [task1 setArguments: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"-clx", nil]];
    [task1 setStandardOutput: pipe1];

    NSTask *task2 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
    NSPipe *pipe2 = [NSPipe pipe];
    [task2 setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/grep"];
    [task2 setArguments: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"'Finder'", nil]];
    [task2 setStandardInput:pipe1];
    [task2 setStandardOutput: pipe2];

    NSTask *task3 = [[NSTask alloc] init];
    NSPipe *pipe3 = [NSPipe pipe];
    [task3 setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/grep"];
    [task3 setArguments: [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"'{print $2}'", nil]];
    [task3 setStandardInput:pipe2];
    [task3 setStandardOutput: pipe3];

    NSFileHandle *file = [pipe3 fileHandleForReading];

    [task1 launch];
    [task2 launch];
    [task3 launch];

    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:NSTaskDidTerminateNotification
                                                      object:task3
                                                       queue:nil
                                                  usingBlock:^(NSNotification* notification){

                                                      NSData * data = [file readDataToEndOfFile];

                                                      NSString * string;
                                                      string = [[NSString alloc] initWithData: data encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];
                                                      NSLog(@"Result: %@", string);
                                                  }];
}

Answer 1

The tasks run in a separate process from your code, i.e., asychronously. They probably haven’t finished (they may not have even launched!) by the time you get to the readDataToEndOfFile two lines later.

If you’re already on a background thread here, you can poll their status: while( ![task isRunning]){, or if you’re on the main thread, I’d suggest using GCD to put this onto a queue and doing the polling there.

Actually, better than that would be to use notifications:

[task3 launch];

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserverForName:NSTaskDidTerminateNotification
                                                  object:task3
                                                   queue:nil
                                              usingBlock:^{

    NSData * data = [file readDataToEndOfFile];

    NSString * string;
    string = [[NSString alloc] initWithData: data encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding];

    NSLog(@"Result: %@", string);
}];

See TN2050: Observing Process Lifetime Without Polling. Each NSTask will send NSTaskDidTerminateNotification when it terminates (you should, ideally, check its return code rather than assuming it ran successfully). You can create a block to be run when task3 sends that notification.