perl script sending signals to java

[mayank gupta]

Hello,

I have a perl program writing to a flat file and a java file reading from it. At some point of time the perl program should send a signal to the java program and the java on reading it should perform certain action on the flat file.

Could you please suggest how is that possible.

Mayank.

[Martijn Verburg]

Hmm, I'm no Perl guru but can't you just get perl to execute 'java <arguments> <program>' on the 'command line'?

[mayank gupta]

I dont want to execute the java program from perl. i want to send a signal from perl to an already running java app. The java app has to do some signal handling and take action according to that. Is it possible?

[Martijn Verburg]

Again, I'm not sure of the 'Perl interacting with Java' capabilities, but is there a common protocol they can talk over? e.g. RMI? Web Services? Heck even get Perl to Touch a File and the Java program has a thread which detects the file time stamp changing?

[mayank gupta]

Touching a File option i have tried and it doesnt fir my requirements. Do you have any idea about handling signals in java?

[mayank gupta]

Could you please let me know something about how to handle signals in java and if perl signals can be handled as well. I tried searching but couldnt get much information. Could you please provide some pointers.

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

mayank gupta wrote:Could you please let me know something about how to handle signals in java and if perl signals can be handled as well. I tried searching but couldnt get much information. Could you please provide some pointers.

You can't handle signals in 100% Java; the standard libraries have no signal-related capabilities at all. You might be able to use native code to handle signals, especially if you write main() in C and create a JVM from your C code. Even there, though, the JVM library does some signal handling itself (mostly just crash-protection) and your added handlers may either break things or not work properly.

Instead of using signals, let the Java program create a ServerSocket to listen on a well-known port; create a Thread dedicated to listening on that socket, in a loop. Then let that thread handle a simple command language. It's a simple matter, then, for your Perl program to connect to that socket and send the desired command(s).

[mayank gupta]

Thank you for the suggestion. Is there any other way in which I can let the java program be informed when another program(perl) is renaming a file. I am not too sure about socket programming in java so it would be really nice if we could come up with something else.

[Martijn Verburg]

Well you can have a thread or say a quartz driven timer to simply check the name of the file every x seconds.

[mayank gupta]

I used the non standard API for the time being (to handle the signals) rather than going through the pain of the Native code.

Thank You.