goshellexecute

Exec a shell command in Go


I'm looking to execute a shell command in Go and get the resulting output as a string in my program. I saw the Rosetta Code version:

package main
import "fmt"
import "exec"

func main() {
  cmd, err := exec.Run("/bin/ls", []string{"/bin/ls"}, []string{}, "", exec.DevNull, exec.PassThrough, exec.PassThrough)
  if (err != nil) {
    fmt.Println(err)
    return
  }
  cmd.Close()

But this doesn't capture the actual standard out or err in a way that I can programatically access - those still print out to the regular stdout / stderr. I saw that using Pipe as the out or err could help elsewhere, but no example of how to do so. Any ideas?


Solution

  • This answer does not represent the current state of the Go standard library. Please take a look at @Lourenco's answer for an up-to-date method!


    Your example does not actually read the data from stdout. This works for me.

    package main
    
    import (
       "fmt"
       "exec"
       "os"
       "bytes"
       "io"
    )
    
    func main() {
        app := "/bin/ls"
        cmd, err := exec.Run(app, []string{app, "-l"}, nil, "", exec.DevNull, exec.Pipe, exec.Pipe)
    
        if (err != nil) {
           fmt.Fprintln(os.Stderr, err.String())
           return
        }
    
        var b bytes.Buffer
        io.Copy(&b, cmd.Stdout)
        fmt.Println(b.String())
    
        cmd.Close()
    }