Send Ctrl-C to process open by Java

Question

Under Windows OS.

I start a sub-process via a Runtime.getRuntime().exec(); I want to send a "ctrl-c" to the process to stop it.

I did a small example, with Runtime.getRuntime().exec("ping google.com -n 100000"); The code can be found there : http://pastebin.com/f6315063f

So far, I tried to send the char '3' (ctrl-C character) via Process outputStream.

Here is a bit of code:

 cmd = re.exec("ping google.com -n 10000"); 
 out = new BufferedWriter (new OutputStreamWriter(cmd.getOutputStream()));
 input =  new BufferedReader (new  InputStreamReader(cmd.getInputStream()));


 char ctrlBreak = (char)3;
 //Different testing way to send the ctrlBreak;
 out.write(ctrlBreak);
 out.flush();
 out.write(ctrlBreak+"\n");
 out.flush();

I don't want to kill the process, I just want to send a Ctrl-C signal. How can I do that?

Answer 1

I believe Ctrl-C is caught by the shell and translated into a signal (SIGINT) which is sent to the underlying process (in this case your spawned process).

So I think you'll need to get the process id and then send the appropriate signal to that process. This question appears to be very similar and points to various resources of use.