how to JUDGE other program's result via cpp? - c++

I've got a series of cpp source file and I want to write another program to JUDGE if they can run correctly (give input and compare their output with standart output) . so how to:
call/spawn another program, and give a file to be its standard input
limit the time and memory of the child process (maybe setrlimit thing? is there any examples?)
donot let the process to read/write any file
use a file to be its standard output
compare the output with the standard output.
I think the 2nd and 3rd are the core part of this prob. Is there any way to do this?
ps. system is Linux

To do this right, you probably want to spawn the child program with fork, not system.
This allows you to do a few things. First of all, you can set up some pipes to the parent process so the parent can supply the input to the child, and capture the output from the child to compare to the expected result.
Second, it will let you call seteuid (or one of its close relatives like setreuid) to set the child process to run under a (very) limited user account, to prevent it from writing to files. When fork returns in the parent, you'll want to call setrlimit to limit the child's CPU usage.
Just to be clear: rather than directing the child's output to a file, then comparing that to the expected output, I'd capture the child's output directly via a pipe to the parent. From there the parent can write the data to a file if desired, but can also compare the output directly to what's expected, without going through a file.

std::string command = "/bin/local/app < my_input.txt > my_output_file.txt 2> my_error_file.txt";
int rv = std::system( command.c_str() );

1) The system function from the STL allows you to execute a program (basically as if invoked from a shell). Note that this approach is inherenly insecure, so only use it in a trusted environment.
2) You will need to use threads to be able to achieve this. There are a number of thread libraries available for C++, but I cannot give you recommendation.
[After edit in OP's post]
3) This one is harder. You either have to write a wrapper that monitors read/write access to files or do some Linux/Unix privilege magic to prevent it from accessing files.
4) You can redirect the output of a program (that it thinks goes to the standard output) by adding > outFile.txt after the way you would normally invoke the program (see 1)) -- e.g. otherapp > out.txt
5) You could run diff on the saved file (from 3)) to the "golden standard"/expected output captured in another file. Or use some other method that better fits your need (for example you don't care about certain formatting as long as the "content" is there). -- This part is really dependent on your needs. diff does a basic comparing job well.

Related

How I can monitor the output files and move/rename in desired directory

A program generates a text file after every 15 iterations. It overwrites the output.txt (formed at 15th step) with a new output.txt (formed at 30th step), due to using the same name. I can't modify the file name within the program. Can I run some script concurrently with the program on my Ubuntu system that monitors my directory and moves the output.txt file to a desired directory when it is formed or changes the output file name?
I can't modify the file name within the program.
(I take this to mean you are required to not change the file name, not that you don't know how.)
You've marked this posting as C++.
While it is possible to run some script to monitor a directory, coordinating the name change and running a thread or another process (from C++) can be much more challenging than other choices.
How about a simpler approach:
I suggest using std::stringstream to generate a unique pfn (path-file-name) for each time you want to write a file. For instance, an incrementing number can be appended to the unmodifiable-file-name.
Something like:
std::string uniqueFileName(void)
{
std::stringstream ss;
// vvvvvvvvvv -- unmodifiable-file-name is not changed
ss << "output.txt" << ++fileCount;
uniqueFileName = ss.str();
return(uniqueFileName);
}
Good luck.
PS
If you feel you must write the file first in the correct file name, and then change the file name to something unique ... yes, you can rename the file from within this program (i.e. trivial synchronization)
I would use popen() as I feel it provides more feedback, and I've used it before.
Others prefer something like system() (there are about 6 of these).
In either case, use the command to rename the existing file (to each you provide a bash command, like mv fromPfn toPfn, or maybe you'll need cp.
For each, your code must not proceed until the command has completed.

c++ software passing arguments method

I have a problem related to passing arguments to a C++ compiled executable. The program emulate the behaviour of a particular inference engine: the setup of the engine is load at runtime from an XML file, and then I want to call it from command line with different input values.
The characteristic of the input are:
Every time that I call the program, the input structure is different, because the system itself is different.
The input is a set of couple {name, value}, one for each part of the system.
I have to separate the configuration XML from the input.
I call the program from a PHP or Node.js server, since it return a result that I expose to the outside through an API.
Input value are obtained from an HTTP post request.
By now I have tried these solutions:
Pass it from the command line ex: "./mysoftware input1 value1 input2 value2 ...etc". A little unconfortable, since I have up to 200 input.
Create a file with all the couples name,value and then call the program that parse the file and then destroy at the end. This is a bottleneck of performance for my API, because at every call I have to create and destruct a file.
Does anyone know a better way to approach this problem?
3. Pass the values to the program via the standard input stream and read them from std::cin inside your C++ program.

C++ - system command

I have a C++ program which is mainly used for video processing. Inside the program, I am launching the system command in order to obtain pass the processed videos to some other binaries to postprocess them.
I have a while loop towards infinite and I am launching the system command inside the loop every time. The thing is that at a certain point I am receiving the -1 return code from the system command. What could be the reason for that?
Inside the system command I am just calling a binary file with the adequate parameters from the main project.
The system command which I want to execute is actually a shell file.
In this file I am extracting the main feature from the video and passing them through a SVM model from a 3D party library in order to obtain the the desired classification.
./LiveGestureKernel ./Video ./SvmVideo
./mat4libsvm31 -l SvmVideoLabels < SvmVideo > temp_test_file
./svm-predict temp_test_file svm_model temp_output_file
cat < temp_output_file
rm -f temp_*
After a certain number of iterations through the while loop, it just won't execute the script file and I cannot figure out the reason for this. Thanks!
If you get -1 from the call to system(), you should first examine the contents of errno - that will most likely tell you what your specific problem is.
The one thing to watch out for is that the return value from system is an implementation-defined one in the case where you pass it a non-NULL command, so it's possible that -1 may be coming from your actual executable.
Your best bet in that case is to print out (or otherwise log) the command being executed on failure (and possibly all the time), so that you can check what happens with the same arguments when you execute it directly from a command line or shell.

QSettings - Sync issue between two process

I am using Qsettings for non gui products to store its settings into xml files. This is written as a library which gets used in C, C++ programs. There will be 1 xml file file for each product. Each product might have more than one sub products and they are written into xml by subproduct grouping as follows -
File: "product1.xml"
<product1>
<subproduct1>
<settings1>..</settings1>
....
<settingsn>..</settingsn>
</subproduct1>
...
<subproductn>
<settings1>..</settings1>
....
<settingsn>..</settingsn>
</subproductn>
</product1>
File: productn.xml
<productn>
<subproduct1>
<settings1>..</settings1>
....
<settingsn>..</settingsn>
</subproduct1>
...
<subproductn>
<settings1>..</settings1>
....
<settingsn>..</settingsn>
</subproductn>
</productn>
The code in one process does the following -
settings = new QSettings("product1.xml", XmlFormat);
settings.setValue("settings1",<value>)
sleep(20);
settings.setValue("settings2", <value2>)
settings.sync();
When the first process goes to sleep, I start another process which does the following -
settings = new QSettings("product1.xml", XmlFormat);
settings.remove("settings1")
settings.setValue("settings3", <value3>)
settings.sync();
I would expect the settings1 to go away from product1.xml file but it still persist in the file - product1.xml at the end of above two process. I am not using QCoreApplication(..) in my settings library. Please point issues if there is anything wrong in the above design.
This is kind of an odd thing that you're doing, but one thing to note is that the sync() call is what actually writes the file to disk. In this case if you want your second process to actually see the changes you've made, then you'll need to call sync() before your second process accesses the file in order to guarantee that it will actually see your modifications. Thus I would try putting a settings.sync() call right before your sleep(20)
Maybe you have to do delete settings; after the sync() to make sure it is not open, then do the writing in the other process?
Does this compile? What implementation of XmlFormat are you using and which OS? There must be some special code in your project for storing / reading to and from Xml - there must be something in this code which works differently from what you expect.

Read from a file when a new line 's been written to it by another process

What is the fastest method in C++, to read a new line from a file which is written by another process. Or how my program can be notified that there is a new line in file so read it? (in linux)
The fastest method is to use pipes or events (for Windows apps).
If you still want use files, first of all that you really need, making sure, that a file has been really modified (use seek and compare it with prew value). Than go to the 'last val of seek' and read it.
And it will be better use mutex (if you read data from file).
Assuming the OS supports concurrent file access, all you should need to do is seek to EOF, wait for the stat to change then try to read from the file. You might want to add in a sleep to slow down the loop.
The 'tail' command on POISX (with the -f option) implements this - source code is available.
From the top of my head, did u tried something like this:
Count the lines in a file, store it.
Get the size of the file (google it, i dont want to ruin the fun :D ).
Then try to read from the last line u stored when size of the file changes... and again and again.
Have fun :)
Use inotify to get notification about file changes and then reread from your last pos if the file is now larger then before.