If Command is a string or atom, the first word in Command specifies the program to be executed, following words are its command-line arguments. If Command is a list, the first list element specifies the program to be executed and the subsequent elements are its arguments. The latter form is preferred since it avoids problems with argument quoting.
By specifying the Streams argument it is possible to control which of the process' standard streams are connected to ECLiPSe streams. The form of Streams is [Stdin, Stdout, Stderr]. If some of these streams are specified and not null, a pipe is opened which connects the standard stream of the child process with the specified ECLiPSe stream, e.g. Stdin must be an output stream because it is connected to the standard input of the child process. If the list Streams is shorter, only the specified streams are connected with a pipe. The streams can be specified like for open/3. If the stream is a variable, it is bound to the physical stream number, if it is an atom different from null, that symbolic stream is used. Specifying a null stream means that no pipe is set up for this stream.
Each stream can also be specified as sigio(Stream) (BSD systems only). In this case a pipe is set up to the stream Stream and in addition the pipe is instructed to send the signal io each time new data appears in it. In this way the two processes can communicate in a truly asynchronous way. When one process sends data to the other one, the interrupt handler is invoked and it can read and process the data. When it finishes, it can continue where it was interrupted.
exec(Command, Streams) is equivalent to
exec(Command, Streams, Pid), wait(Pid, _)
exec(Command, []) is very similar to system(Command).
Success: % exec/2 wait for the child process [eclipse]: exec(ls, []), write(end_exec). aux.o coroutine.pl kegi.pl sepia.o bsi.pl cprolog.pl lint.pl sorts.pl cio.pl history.pl lists.pl strings.pl cn.pl k_env.pl quintus.pl t_all.pl end_exec yes. % exec/3 return immediately [eclipse]: exec(ls, [], Pid), write(end_exec). end_exec Pid = 16054 yes. [eclipse]: aux.o coroutine.pl kegi.pl sepia.o bsi.pl cprolog.pl lint.pl sorts.pl cio.pl history.pl lists.pl strings.pl cn.pl k_env.pl quintus.pl t_all.pl Error: exec(S, [output]). (Error 4). exec(ls, null). (Error 5). exec(chipc, [f(output)]). (Error 5). exec(date, [input]). (Error 192).