Ok, so I know you can make an NSTask to run command line tools with Objective-C:
NSTask *task;
task = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/gdb"];
[task launch];
I'm just wondering if there's a way to communicate with interactive command line tools such a as gdb. This would involve giving the command inputs based on user interaction (like run, kill or quit with gdb) and then reacting based on the information it outputs.
You can use NSTask's setStandardInput:, setStandardOutput: and setStandardError: selectors in conjunction with NSPipe instances to communicate with the launched program.
For example, to read the task's output:
task = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task setStandardOutput: [NSPipe pipe]];
[task setStandardError: [task standardOutput]]; // Get standard error output too
[task setLaunchPath: @"/usr/bin/gdb"];
[task launch];
You can then obtain an NSFileHandle instance that you can use to read the task's output with:
NSFileHandle *readFromMe = [[task standardOutput] fileHandleForReading];
To set up a pipe for sending commands to gdb, you would add
[task setStandardInput: [NSPipe pipe]];
before you launch the task. Then you get the NSFileHandle with
NSFileHandle *writeToMe = [[task standardInput] fileHandleForWriting];