Execute and Control System Processes
Tools to run system processes in the background, read their standard output and error, kill and restart them.
processx can poll the standard output and error of a single process,
or multiple processes, using the operating system's polling and waiting
facilities, with a timeout.
- Start system processes in the background and find their process id.
- Read the standard output and error, using non-blocking R connection objects.
- Poll the standard output and error connections of a single process or multiple processes.
- Check if a background process is running.
- Wait on a background process.
- Get the exit status of a background process, if it has already finished.
- Kill background processes, together with their children.
- Kill background process, when its associated object is garbage collected.
- Restart background processes.
- Works on Linux, macOS and Windows.
- Lightweight, it only depends on the also lightweight
R6,assertthat,crayonanddebugmepackages.
source("https://install-github.me/r-lib/processx")Note: the following external commands are usually present in macOS and Linux systems, but not necessarily on Windows.
library(processx)processx provides two ways to start processes. The first one
requires a single command, and a character vector of arguments.
You don't need to quote the command or the arguments, as they are
passed directly to the operating system, without an intermediate shell.
run("echo", "Hello R!")#> $status
#> [1] 0
#>
#> $stdout
#> [1] "Hello R!\n"
#>
#> $stderr
#> [1] ""
#>
#> $timeout
#> [1] FALSE
The other way is to supply a full shell command line via the
commandline argument:
run(commandline = "echo Hello R!")#> $status
#> [1] 0
#>
#> $stdout
#> [1] "Hello R!\n"
#>
#> $stderr
#> [1] ""
#>
#> $timeout
#> [1] FALSE
This methods starts up a shell, i.e. on Unix-like systems it runs
sh -c <command> and on Windows cmd /c <command>. (If you need a
different shell, then specify that directly in the command argument,
i.e. use the command + args form.
By default run throws an error if the process exits with a non-zero
status code. To avoid this, specify error_on_status = FALSE:
run(commandline = "echo error >&2; exit 2", error_on_status = FALSE)#> $status
#> [1] 2
#>
#> $stdout
#> [1] ""
#>
#> $stderr
#> [1] "error\n"
#>
#> $timeout
#> [1] FALSE
To show the output of the process on the screen, use the echo argument.
Note that the order of stdout and stderr lines may be incorrect,
because they are coming from two different connections.
result <- run(
commandline = "echo out; echo err 1>&2; echo out again",
echo = TRUE)#> out
#> out again
#> err
If you have a terminal that support ANSI colors, then the standard error output is shown in red.
The standard output and error are still included in the result of the
run() call:
result#> $status
#> [1] 0
#>
#> $stdout
#> [1] "out\nout again\n"
#>
#> $stderr
#> [1] "err\n"
#>
#> $timeout
#> [1] FALSE
Note that run is different from system, and it always shows the output
of the process on R's proper standard output, instead of writing to the
terminal directly. This means for example that you can capture the output
with capture.output or use sink, etc.:
out1 <- capture.output(r1 <- system("ls"))
out2 <- capture.output(r2 <- run("ls", echo = TRUE))out1#> character(0)
out2#> [1] "DESCRIPTION" "LICENSE" "Makefile" "NAMESPACE"
#> [5] "NEWS.md" "R" "README.Rmd" "README.md"
#> [9] "appveyor.yml" "inst" "man" "src"
#> [13] "tests"
The spinner option of run puts a calming spinner to the terminal
while the background program is running. The spinner is always shown in the
first character of the last line, so you can make it work nicely with the
regular output of the background process if you like. E.g. try this in your
R terminal:
result <- run(
commandline = paste(
"printf ' foo';",
"sleep 1;",
"printf '\r bar';",
"sleep 1;",
"printf '\rX foobar\n'"),
echo = TRUE, spinner = TRUE)
run can call an R function for each line of the standard output or
error of the process, just supply the stdout_line_callback or the
stderr_line_callback arguments. The callback functions take two
arguments, the first one is a character scalar, the output line. The
second one is the process object that represents the background
process. (See more below about process objects.) You can manipulate
this object in the callback, if you want. For example you can kill it in
response to an error or some text on the standard output:
cb <- function(line, proc) {
cat("Got:", line, "\n")
if (line == "done") proc$kill()
}
result <- run(
commandline = paste(
"echo this; echo that; echo done;",
"echo still here;",
"sleep 10; echo dead by now"),
stdout_line_callback = cb,
error_on_status = FALSE,
)#> Got: this
#> Got: that
#> Got: done
#> Got: still here
result#> $status
#> [1] -9
#>
#> $stdout
#> [1] "this\nthat\ndone\nstill here\n"
#>
#> $stderr
#> [1] ""
#>
#> $timeout
#> [1] FALSE
Keep in mind, that while the R callback is running, the background process
has not stopped, it is also running. In the previous example, whether
still here is printed or not depends on the scheduling of the
R process and the background process by the OS. Typically, it is printed,
because the R callback takes a while to run.
In addition to the line-oriented callbacks, the stdout_callback and
stderr_callback arguments can specify callback functions that are called
with output chunks instead of single lines. A chunk may contain multiple
lines (separated by \n or \r\n), or even incomplete lines.
If you need better control over possibly multiple background processes,
then you can use the R6 process class directly.
To start a new background process, create a new instance of the process
class. Similarly to run, the process constructor supports two
kinds of argument specifications. If commandline is specified, then
it is passed to a shell.
p1 <- process$new("sleep", "20")
p2 <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 20")A process can be killed via the kill method. This also kills
all child processes (unless they created a new process group on Unix,
or a new job object on Windows).
p1$is_alive()#> [1] TRUE
p2$is_alive()#> [1] TRUE
p1$kill()#> [1] TRUE
p2$kill()#> [1] TRUE
p1$is_alive()#> [1] FALSE
p2$is_alive()#> [1] FALSE
A process can be restarted via restart. This works if the process
has been killed, if it has finished regularly, or even if it is running
currently. If it is running, then it will be killed first.
p1$restart()
p1$is_alive()#> [1] TRUE
Note that processes are finalized (and killed) automatically if the
corresponding process object goes out of scope, as soon as the object
is garbage collected by R:
p <- process$new("sleep", "20")
rm(p)
gc()#> used (Mb) gc trigger (Mb) max used (Mb)
#> Ncells 303179 16.2 592000 31.7 460000 24.6
#> Vcells 500110 3.9 1023718 7.9 786411 6.0
Here, the direct call to the garbage collector kills the sleep process
as well. See the cleaup option if you want to avoid this behavior.
By default the standard output and error of the processes are ignored.
You can set the stdout and stderr constructor arguments to a file name,
and then they are redirected there, or to "|", and then processx creates
R connections to them.
The read_output_lines and read_error_lines methods can be used
to read from the standard output or error connections. They work the same
way as the readLines base function.
Alternatively, you can query the connections via the get_output_connection
and get_error_connection functions, and work with them directly.
Note, that the R connections have a buffer, which can fill up, if R does not read out the output, and then the process will stop, until R reads the connection and the buffer is freed.
Always make sure that you read out the standard output and/or error of the pipes, otherwise the background process will stop running!
Note that the connections used for reading the output and error streams are non-blocking text connections, so the read functions will return immediately, even if there is no text to read from them.
p <- process$new(commandline = "echo foo; >&2 echo bar; echo foobar",
stdout = "|", stderr = "|")
p$read_output_lines()#> character(0)
p$read_error_lines()#> [1] "bar"
To check if there is anything available for reading on the standard output
or error streams, you can use the is_incomplete_output() and
is_incomplete_error() methods:
p <- process$new(commandline = "echo foo; sleep 2; echo bar", stdout = "|")
Sys.sleep(1)
## There must be output now
p$is_incomplete_output()#> [1] TRUE
p$read_output_lines()#> [1] "foo"
## There is no more output now
p$is_incomplete_output()#> [1] TRUE
p$read_output_lines()#> character(0)
Sys.sleep(2)
## There is output again
p$is_incomplete_output()#> [1] TRUE
p$read_output_lines()#> [1] "bar"
## There is no more output
p$is_incomplete_output()#> [1] FALSE
p$read_output_lines()#> character(0)
There is no standard way in R to signal the end of a connection, unfortunately. Most R I/O is blocking, and the end of file is reached when nothing can be read from the connection. This clearly does not work for non-blocking connections.
For processx standard output and error streams, you can use the
is_incomplete_output and is_incomplete_error functions to check if
there is any chance that more output will arrive on them later.
The poll_io method waits for data on the standard output and/or error
of a process. It will return if any of the following events happen:
- data is available on the standard output of the process (assuming there is an R connection to the standard output).
- data is available on the standard error of the proces (assuming the is an R connection to the standard error).
- The process has finished and the standard output and/or error connections were closed on the other end.
- The specified timeout period expired.
For example the following code waits about a second for output.
p <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 1; ls", stdout = "|")
## No output yet
p$read_output_lines()#> character(0)
## Wait at most 5 sec
p$poll_io(5000)#> output error
#> "ready" "nopipe"
## There is output now
p$read_output_lines()#> [1] "DESCRIPTION" "LICENSE" "Makefile" "NAMESPACE"
#> [5] "NEWS.md" "R" "README.Rmd" "README.md"
#> [9] "appveyor.yml" "inst" "man" "src"
#> [13] "tests"
If you need to manage multiple background processes, and need to wait
for output from all of them, processx defines a poll function that
does just that. It is similar to the poll_io method, but it takes
multiple process objects, and returns as soon as one of them have data
on standard output or error, or a timeout expires. Here is an example:
p1 <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 1; ls", stdout = "|")
p2 <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 2; ls 1>&2", stderr = "|")
## After 100ms no output yet
poll(list(p1 = p1, p2 = p2), 100)#> $p1
#> output error
#> "timeout" "nopipe"
#>
#> $p2
#> output error
#> "nopipe" "timeout"
## But now we surely have something
poll(list(p1 = p1, p2 = p2), 1000)#> $p1
#> output error
#> "ready" "nopipe"
#>
#> $p2
#> output error
#> "nopipe" "silent"
p1$read_output_lines()#> [1] "DESCRIPTION" "LICENSE" "Makefile" "NAMESPACE"
#> [5] "NEWS.md" "R" "README.Rmd" "README.md"
#> [9] "appveyor.yml" "inst" "man" "src"
#> [13] "tests"
## Done with p1
close(p1$get_output_connection())
## The second process should have data on stderr by now
poll(list(p1 = p1, p2 = p2), 5000)#> $p1
#> output error
#> "closed" "nopipe"
#>
#> $p2
#> output error
#> "nopipe" "ready"
p2$read_error_lines()#> [1] "DESCRIPTION" "LICENSE" "Makefile" "NAMESPACE"
#> [5] "NEWS.md" "R" "README.Rmd" "README.md"
#> [9] "appveyor.yml" "inst" "man" "src"
#> [13] "tests"
As seen before, is_alive checks if a process is running. The wait
method can be used to wait until it has finished (or a specified timeout
expires).. E.g. in the following code wait needs to wait about 2 seconds
for the sleep shell command to finish.
p <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 2")
p$is_alive()#> [1] TRUE
Sys.time()#> [1] "2017-05-18 14:16:55 BST"
p$wait()
Sys.time()#> [1] "2017-05-18 14:16:57 BST"
It is safe to call wait multiple times:
p$wait() # already finished!After a process has finished, its exit status can be queried via the
get_exit_status method. If the process is still running, then this
method returns NULL.
p <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 2")
p$get_exit_status()#> NULL
p$wait()
p$get_exit_status()#> [1] 0
Errors are typically signalled via non-zero exits statuses. The processx
constructor fails if the external program cannot be started,
but it does not deal with errors that happen after the
program has successfully started running.
p <- process$new("nonexistant-command-for-sure")#> Error in process_initialize(self, private, command, args, commandline, : processx error
p2 <- process$new(commandline = "sleep 1; command-does-not-exist-right")
p2$wait()
p2$get_exit_status()#> [1] 127
MIT © Mango Solutions, RStudio, Gábor Csárdi
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