stdout redirection

Question

I am working with a procedure in tcl over which I have no control. It puts out a lot of verbose on the output window like:

Response:<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><soapenv:Body><soapenv:Fault><faultcode>soapenv:Server</faultcode><faultstring>Item not valid: The specified Standard SIP1 Profile was not found</faultstring><detail><axlError><axlcode>5007</axlcode><axlmessage>Item not valid: The specified Standard SIP1 Profile was not found</axlmessage><request>updatePhone</request></axlError></detail></soapenv:Fault></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>

Is there any way i can redirect this stdout to a variable? I am new to tcl and am not aware how i can do this.

Answer 1

If you are using Tcl 8.6, you can trap all the output to stdout by adding a suitable transform via chan push:

# Use a class to simplify the capture code
oo::class create CapturingTransform {
    variable var
    constructor {varName} {
        # Make an alias from the instance variable to the global variable
        my eval [list upvar \#0 $varName var]
    }
    method initialize {handle mode} {
        if {$mode ne "write"} {error "can't handle reading"}
        return {finalize initialize write}
    }
    method finalize {handle} {
        # Do nothing, but mandatory that it exists
    }

    method write {handle bytes} {
        append var $bytes
        # Return the empty string, as we are swallowing the bytes
        return ""
    }
}

# Attach an instance of the capturing transform
set myBuffer ""
chan push stdout [CapturingTransform new myBuffer]

# ... call the problem code as normal ...

# Detach to return things to normal
chan pop stdout

Things to note: this captures all output on the channel, however produced (it even works across threads or where the output is generated at the C level), and this puts bytes into myBuffer as the capturing is applied after the conversion to the channel's configured encoding. And it requires 8.6; the API concerned wasn't exposed to scripts in earlier versions (though it's C-equivalent was used by some extensions for things such as SSL support).

Answer 2

Always the same question..

You have a few options:

• Write a Tcl Extension in C that exposes Tcl_SetStdChannel to script level. Probably one of the better solutions, but not that easy.

• Rename and replace puts. For most output that comes from libs that write to stdout without being asked for this should be good enough. But there are a lot of other ways how someone could write something to stdout, e.g. chan puts, fcopy, exec echo foo >@stdout. I think that it is hard to rewrite all possible places where a channel can be used.

• Remove stdout from the interp. Downside is that you don't get the output. You can get stdout back after the procedure has run. For example:

  set tint [interp create]
  interp transfer {} stdout $tint
  ... call your stuff here...
  interp share $tint stdout {}
  interp delete $int
  

  Note that you should probably not create the interp each time you need that. Create one once, and reuse it.