Java: popen()-like function?

Question

This is in the context of a local Processing program. I would like to run an external program to get some data. Is there a popen() or equivalent function I can use?

Answer 1

Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("your command");

Then you can read and write the data using the Process streams.

Answer 2

JDK5 introduced ProcessBuilder for more control over the process generation.

Process process = new ProcessBuilder(command).start()

Be aware of the fact, that internally forkAndExec is invoked, and fork 'makes a copy of the entire parents address space', so that even a little command can lead to OutOfMemoryErrors, when the parent process has big amount of memory space acquired.

see here