Execing Processes in Groovy

Our example demonstrates how to replace the current process with another using Groovy. Here’s the translated code and explanation:

import groovy.transform.CompileStatic

@CompileStatic
class ExecingProcesses {
    static void main(String[] args) {
        // For our example we'll exec 'ls'. Groovy can use the 'which' command
        // to find the absolute path to the binary we want to execute.
        def binary = "which ls".execute().text.trim()
        if (binary.isEmpty()) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Could not find 'ls' binary")
        }

        // We'll give 'ls' a few common arguments. Note that the first argument
        // should be the program name.
        def processArgs = ["ls", "-a", "-l", "-h"]

        // We need to provide the current environment variables.
        def env = System.getenv()

        // Here's the actual process execution. If this call is successful,
        // the execution of our process will end here and be replaced by
        // the '/bin/ls -a -l -h' process. If there is an error, we'll catch it.
        try {
            def process = new ProcessBuilder(processArgs)
                .inheritIO()
                .environment(env)
                .start()
            
            // Wait for the process to complete
            int exitCode = process.waitFor()
            System.exit(exitCode)
        } catch (Exception e) {
            System.err.println("Error executing process: ${e.message}")
            System.exit(1)
        }
    }
}

When we run our program, it will be replaced by ls:

$ groovy ExecingProcesses.groovy
total 16K
drwxr-xr-x  4 user user 4.0K May 15 10:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 91 user user 4.0K May 15 09:50 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 user user 1.3K May 15 10:00 ExecingProcesses.groovy

Note that Groovy doesn’t offer a direct equivalent to the Unix exec system call that completely replaces the current process. Instead, we use ProcessBuilder to start a new process and then exit our current process. This achieves a similar effect, although it’s not exactly the same as the Unix exec.

Also, Groovy (like Java) doesn’t have a direct equivalent to the Unix fork function. However, Groovy provides powerful concurrency features through its GPars library and Java’s concurrency utilities, which cover most use cases for fork.