InputStream to Channel for Selector

Question

I've searched high and low, but can't find a definitive, up-to-date answer to my question about NIO.

Is there any way to convert from an InputStream to a Channel that I can use with a Selector? It seems like Channels.newChannel() is the only way to do the conversion but doesn't provide an instance of AbstractSelectableChannel, which is really what I need.

More specifically, I would like to read from the stdout and stderr streams of a subprocess without creating one thread per stream, and it seems this is the only way to do it in pure Java. Since these streams are using pipes to pass I/O back and forth I'm surprised .newChannel doesn't return a Pipe.SourceChannel, which is a subclass of AbstractSelectableChannel.

I'm using Java 7 (although if new functionality is available in 8 I would still be happy for an answer).

EDIT: I also tried casting the results of .newChannel() to a selectable channel to no avail - it is not a selectable channel.

Answer 1

There is no way to do what you're asking, but you don't need a thread per stream. Just merge the streams with the API provided for the purpose, and read the output in the current thread.