[SOLVED] Pluming the C pipes

[dempl_dempl]

Hi all,

I'm currently making some very cool archiving library. If you want to see the details about it , you'll find usefull info here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=703757) , but that's irrelevant for this thread.

I'm currenlty having problems with RAR format.
Since I could not find some decent low-level RAR library, I've decided to use unrar command in background ,and to pipe it trough . I did not simply called fork/exec without pipes, because I want to place progress monitors and appropriate events.



/* This code is bit simplified, of course, I've omitted logging and stuff */


// This command prints given archive-file to stdout ( option p )
// without printing any extra info like Copyright form RARLabs ( -inul )
// The objective is to have same effect as writing the following in console:
// rar p -inul 'myarchive.rar' 'myfile.pdf' > '/home/dule/myfolder/myfile.pdf'

FILE *fpipe;
string command= "rar p -inul \'" + "myarchive.rar" + "\' \'" + "myfile.pdf" + "\'";

if ( !(fpipe = (FILE*)popen(command.c_str(),"r")) )
{ // If fpipe is NULL

pclose(fpipe);
exit(1);

}
char c;
ofstream fout( "/home/dule/myfolder/myfile.pdf" );

while( (c = fgetc(fpipe)) != EOF)
{
fout << c;
}


pclose(fpipe);
return true;



For small text files it works . When I try to do this with , for example , PDF file, program exits cleanly, but it unpacks small portion of file.

When I issue the same command from shell, it works just as it should be.
rar p -inul 'myarchive.rar' 'myfile.pdf' > '/home/dule/myfolder/myfile.pdf'


Thanks in advance.
If anyone needs full source, I'll drop a link

[dempl_dempl]

He he , I'm just posting in order to send this thread on the first page , again :-) .

[Zugzwang]

I'm not sure but the problem might be here:


while( (c = fgetc(fpipe)) != EOF)

The variable "c" is of type char (which has a length of one byte, I think), so if you read a "FF" byte from the input stream, it is treated as "-1" which is EOF. Try to test if the pdf file ends before the first occurrence of a 0xFF byte in the stream (use hexdump).

If this is the problem, define "c" as an int and case accordingly:


int c;
ofstream fout( "/home/dule/myfolder/myfile.pdf" );

while( (c = fgetc(fpipe)) != EOF)
{
fout << (char)c;
}

Note that your code is mixed C/C++, so the title of your post is misleading.

[dempl_dempl]

I've did exactly as you've said , and it worked ! Thank you!