One year ago, I wrote about my desire to get a substitute for the limited VIO window when using cmd.exe or 4os2.exe without 8000 character limit and with all editor functionality.
https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,1859.msg18588.html#msg18588The last year, I was very busy with other things, but meanwhile I began to program. I am the author of
ME Editor and other editors. The editor is an OOP (wdsibyl) project where I can easy manage modifications.
I managed now to excute the original cmd.exe with pipes for stdout, stdin and stderr. The basic input/output functionality works already. But I need your help with some sophisticated problems.
The editor gets first executed, starts the pipes and executes cmd.exe in the background via
cmd.exe /K >outpipe 2>errorpipe <inpipeFor specific commands like
mode, cls the commands will be interpretated by the editor and not cmd.exe, or gets interpretated by both. The current directory will be hold both in the editor and in cmd.exe. I will manage to turn the 4os2 escape codes into colors. All these things seem to make no problems to program (all not programmed yet).
But for three problems I have no solution yet:
(1) While cmd.exe is busy, the editor has to turn into read-only mode. The time period begins with an <ENTER> after typing the command, so the editor knows this moment. But when is the job finished and cmd.exe turns to idle state, the editor should turn to read/write and should accept the next command. I have no idea how the editor can get the information that cmd.exe is in idle state again.
A dirty solution would be to wait for [C:\] or a simular string. But this is not possible. And this is the next problem.
(CHANGED: Problem (2) is non-existant. It was a bug in my editor code.)
(2) A stdout output of cmd.exe waits until the line is finished with an carriagereturn. This has got a strange effect to my program: When starting the program, I do not see [C:\] at the moment. Then I type my command, e.g. "dir", press ENTER and the editor shows the "dir" output. But the last line with the command prompt [C:\] is not shown. It is only shown after entering the next command. Programs with an success indication with dots ...... are invisible while exeuting and waiting. So my question is: Is it possible to force stdout output in cmd.exe when the line is not terminated by a carriagereturn? Or do you have another idea how to sailing round the problem? The only idea for me at the moment is to simulate this output by adding a prompt and to swallow the first line output. Not a pretty solution. And the success dot problem is still not solved.
(3) Not all textmode programs do write into stdout, but there is text output shown nevertheless. This output gets shown in the hidden cmd.exe VIO window and not in my editor window. Can someone explain what this means and perhaps how to get this text in stdout nevertheless?
