+1: stdin can be a pipe or redirected from a file.
It should be sent by the user. So is it that only the user can invoke EOF in stdin by pressing Ctrl + Z ? Yes, you can set the EOF indicator for stdin with a special key combination you can input in the console, for linux console that is Ctrl + D and for windows it's Ctrl + Z .
you can just fclose(stdin), it will call close() on the file handle.
Use isatty
:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <io.h>
...
if (isatty(fileno(stdin)))
printf( "stdin is a terminal\n" );
else
printf( "stdin is a file or a pipe\n");
(On windows they're prefixed with underscores: _isatty
, _fileno
)
For many use cases the POSIX function isatty()
is all what it is needed to detect if stdin is connected to a terminal. A minimal example:
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
if (isatty(fileno(stdin)))
puts("stdin is connected to a terminal");
else
puts("stdin is NOT connected to a terminal");
return 0;
}
The following section compares different methods that can be used if different degrees of interactivity have to be tested.
There are several methods to detect if a program is running interactively. Following table shows an overview:
cmd\method ctermid open isatty fstat ―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――― ./test /dev/tty OK YES S_ISCHR ./test ≺ test.cc /dev/tty OK NO S_ISREG cat test.cc | ./test /dev/tty OK NO S_ISFIFO echo ./test | at now /dev/tty FAIL NO S_ISREG
The results are from a Ubuntu Linux 11.04 system using following program:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <termios.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main() {
char tty[L_ctermid+1] = {0};
ctermid(tty);
cout << "ID: " << tty << '\n';
int fd = ::open(tty, O_RDONLY);
if (fd < 0) perror("Could not open terminal");
else {
cout << "Opened terminal\n";
struct termios term;
int r = tcgetattr(fd, &term);
if (r < 0) perror("Could not get attributes");
else cout << "Got attributes\n";
}
if (isatty(fileno(stdin))) cout << "Is a terminal\n";
else cout << "Is not a terminal\n";
struct stat stats;
int r = fstat(fileno(stdin), &stats);
if (r < 0) perror("fstat failed");
else {
if (S_ISCHR(stats.st_mode)) cout << "S_ISCHR\n";
else if (S_ISFIFO(stats.st_mode)) cout << "S_ISFIFO\n";
else if (S_ISREG(stats.st_mode)) cout << "S_ISREG\n";
else cout << "unknown stat mode\n";
}
return 0;
}
If the interactive session needs certain capabilities, you can open the
terminal device and (temporarily) set terminal attributes you need
via tcsetattr()
.
The Python code that decides whether the interpreter runs interactively uses isatty()
. The Function PyRun_AnyFileExFlags()
/* Parse input from a file and execute it */
int
PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(FILE *fp, const char *filename, int closeit,
PyCompilerFlags *flags)
{
if (filename == NULL)
filename = "???";
if (Py_FdIsInteractive(fp, filename)) {
int err = PyRun_InteractiveLoopFlags(fp, filename, flags);
calls Py_FdIsInteractive()
/*
* The file descriptor fd is considered ``interactive'' if either
* a) isatty(fd) is TRUE, or
* b) the -i flag was given, and the filename associated with
* the descriptor is NULL or "<stdin>" or "???".
*/
int
Py_FdIsInteractive(FILE *fp, const char *filename)
{
if (isatty((int)fileno(fp)))
return 1;
which calls isatty()
.
There are different degrees of interactivity. For checking if stdin
is
connected to a pipe/file or a real terminal isatty()
is a natural method to
do that.
Probably they are checking the type of file that "stdin" is with fstat, something like this:
struct stat stats;
fstat(0, &stats);
if (S_ISCHR(stats.st_mode)) {
// Looks like a tty, so we're in interactive mode.
} else if (S_ISFIFO(stats.st_mode)) {
// Looks like a pipe, so we're in non-interactive mode.
}
Of course Python is open source, so you can just look at what they do and know for sure:
http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.2/Python-2.6.2.tar.bz2
On Windows you can use GetFileType.
HANDLE hIn = GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE);
DWORD type = GetFileType(hIn);
switch (type) {
case FILE_TYPE_CHAR:
// it's from a character device, almost certainly the console
case FILE_TYPE_DISK:
// redirected from a file
case FILE_TYPE_PIPE:
// piped from another program, a la "echo hello | myprog"
case FILE_TYPE_UNKNOWN:
// this shouldn't be happening...
}
Call stat() or fstat() and see if S_IFIFO is set in st_mode.
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With