Groovy executing shell commands

// a wrapper closure around executing a string                                  
// can take either a string or a list of strings (for arguments with spaces)    
// prints all output, complains and halts on error                              
def runCommand = { strList ->
  assert ( strList instanceof String ||
           ( strList instanceof List && strList.each{ it instanceof String } ) \
)
  def proc = strList.execute()
  proc.in.eachLine { line -> println line }
  proc.out.close()
  proc.waitFor()

  print "[INFO] ( "
  if(strList instanceof List) {
    strList.each { print "${it} " }
  } else {
    print strList
  }
  println " )"

  if (proc.exitValue()) {
    println "gave the following error: "
    println "[ERROR] ${proc.getErrorStream()}"
  }
  assert !proc.exitValue()
}

Ok, solved it myself;

def sout = new StringBuilder(), serr = new StringBuilder()
def proc = 'ls /badDir'.execute()
proc.consumeProcessOutput(sout, serr)
proc.waitForOrKill(1000)
println "out> $sout\nerr> $serr"

displays:

out> err> ls: cannot access /badDir: No such file or directory

"ls".execute() returns a Process object which is why "ls".execute().text works. You should be able to just read the error stream to determine if there were any errors.

There is a extra method on Process that allow you to pass a StringBuffer to retrieve the text: consumeProcessErrorStream(StringBuffer error).

Example:

def proc = "ls".execute()
def b = new StringBuffer()
proc.consumeProcessErrorStream(b)

println proc.text
println b.toString()

I find this more idiomatic:

def proc = "ls foo.txt doesnotexist.txt".execute()
assert proc.in.text == "foo.txt\n"
assert proc.err.text == "ls: doesnotexist.txt: No such file or directory\n"

As another post mentions, these are blocking calls, but since we want to work with the output, this may be necessary.