PATCH: Misc. zpty tweaks, plus commentary

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@candle.brasslantern.com>]

The first hunk below simply adds strerror output to a couple of warning
messages, so one has a better idea of why things went wrong.

The second hunk passes (!cmd->block) as the final argument of read_poll().
Without this, `zpty -b foo bar; zpty -t foo' would hang until `bar' produced
output (which it might never do).  With it, I suspect that on systems that
don't HAVE_SELECT you can get a nonzero return from zpty -t even when some
output is still available; but I can't test that and I don't know another
fix for the blocking problem.

The third through sixth hunks change `zpty -r' to stream to stdout when
there is no parameter name into which the output is to be captured, rather
than buffering all the output in memory.

The fifth and seventh hunks remove some code that's been #if 0 for a while.

The motivation for all this is to be able to use a program running under
zpty as a filter, much like a coproc.  `zpty -w' already was able to stream
into the pty (even though that's not documented); e.g. `zpty -w foo < file'
writes the entire contents of the file to the pty (or tries to -- it might
fail if `zpty -b' was not used to create the pty).  Now `zpty -r foo' can
stream the output as well.  Unfortunately, it's still not possible to do
both at once.

The problem is that whenever zsh forks a builtin, it closes all descriptors
numbered higher than 10, which includes the master pty descriptor.  So if
you try to use `zpty -r' or `zpty -w' in a pipeline, or try to put them in
the background, they'll get "invalid file descriptor" when attempting to
access the pty.  I've played with "hiding" the master fd by zeroing its slot
in fdtable[], and that does make zpty work correctly, but it also means that
the master descriptor is still open when running other builtins, which is
not quite so desirable.

Any suggestions for the right approach to fixing this remaining problem?

Index: Src/Modules/zpty.c
===================================================================
@@ -275,12 +275,12 @@
 	return 1;
     }
     if (get_pty(1, &master)) {
-	zwarnnam(nam, "can't open pseudo terminal", NULL, 0);
+	zwarnnam(nam, "can't open pseudo terminal: %e", NULL, errno);
 	return 1;
     }
     if ((pid = fork()) == -1) {
+	zwarnnam(nam, "can't create pty command %s: %e", pname, errno);
 	close(master);
-	zwarnnam(nam, "couldn't create pty command: %s", pname, 0);
 	return 1;
     } else if (!pid) {
 
@@ -438,7 +438,8 @@
 {
     if (cmd->read != -1)
 	return;
-    if (!read_poll(cmd->fd, &cmd->read, 1) && kill(cmd->pid, 0) < 0) {
+    if (!read_poll(cmd->fd, &cmd->read, !cmd->block) &&
+	kill(cmd->pid, 0) < 0) {
 	cmd->fin = 1;
 	zclose(cmd->fd);
     }
@@ -447,7 +448,7 @@
 static int
 ptyread(char *nam, Ptycmd cmd, char **args)
 {
-    int blen = 256, used = 0, ret = 1;
+    int blen = 256, used = 0, seen = 0, ret = 1;
     char *buf = (char *) zhalloc((blen = 256) + 1);
     Patprog prog = NULL;
 
@@ -465,7 +466,9 @@
 	    zwarnnam(nam, "bad pattern: %s", args[1], 0);
 	    return 1;
 	}
-    }
+    } else
+	fflush(stdout);
+
     if (cmd->read != -1) {
 	buf[0] = (char) cmd->read;
 	buf[1] = '\0';
@@ -479,30 +482,19 @@
 		break;
 	}
 	if ((ret = read(cmd->fd, buf + used, 1)) == 1) {
+	    seen = 1;
 	    if (++used == blen) {
-		buf = hrealloc(buf, blen, blen << 1);
-		blen <<= 1;
+		if (!*args) {
+		    write(1, buf, used);
+		    used = 0;
+		} else {
+		    buf = hrealloc(buf, blen, blen << 1);
+		    blen <<= 1;
+		}
 	    }
 	}
 	buf[used] = '\0';
 
-#if 0
-	/* This once used the following test, to make sure to return
-	 * non-zero if there are no characters to read.  That looks
-	 * like a thinko now, because it disables non-blocking ptys. */
-
-	if (ret < 0 && (cmd->block
-#ifdef EWOULDBLOCK
-			|| errno != EWOULDBLOCK
-#else
-#ifdef EAGAIN
-			|| errno != EAGAIN
-#endif
-#endif
-			))
-	    break;
-#endif
-
 	if (!prog && ret <= 0)
 	    break;
     } while (!errflag && !breaks && !retflag && !contflag &&
@@ -511,11 +503,10 @@
 
     if (*args)
 	setsparam(*args, ztrdup(metafy(buf, used, META_HREALLOC)));
-    else {
-	fflush(stdout);
+    else
 	write(1, buf, used);
-    }
-    return !used;
+
+    return !seen;
 }
 
 static int
@@ -524,21 +515,7 @@
     int written;
 
     for (; len; len -= written, s += written) {
-	if ((written = write(cmd->fd, s, len)) < 0
-#if 0
-	    /* Same as above. */
-	    &&
-	    (cmd->block
-#ifdef EWOULDBLOCK
-			|| errno != EWOULDBLOCK
-#else
-#ifdef EAGAIN
-			|| errno != EAGAIN
-#endif
-#endif
-	     )
-#endif
-	    )
+	if ((written = write(cmd->fd, s, len)) < 0)
 	    return 1;
 	if (written < 0) {
 	    checkptycmd(cmd);

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net