Extracting a process's exit code in the case of ThreadInterrupted

fthinker picture fthinker · May 28, 2011 · Viewed 10.9k times · Source

I have just created a process through an exec() call and I am now using its .waitFor() method. I need to catch an InterruptedException but I am not sure what I should place in the catch code block. I would like to receive the exit code but I won't if the current thread is interrupted. What should I do to get the exit code out of the process if the thread is interrupted?

Example:

import java.io.IOException;


public class Exectest {
public static void main(String args[]){
      int exitval;

      try {
        Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ls -la ~/");
        exitval = p.waitFor();
        System.out.println(exitval);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        //Call failed, notify user.
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        //waitFor() didn't complete. I still want to get the exit val. 
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

}
}

Answer

stevevls picture stevevls · May 28, 2011

If I were you, I'd put this into the catch block:

p.destroy();
exitval = p.exitValue();

Since your thread has been interrupted, something has gone wrong. destroy() will forcibly terminate the process, and then exitValue() will give you the exit value (which should be an error code since it's been terminated).

More http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/Process.html