Golang : Capture text return from exec function example

Problem:

You want to capture the text result return by exec function. How to do that?

Solution:

The code example below demonstrates how to capture the text result returns by the os/exec function. What the code does is to prepare in advance a pipe(io.ReadCloser) first before executing the exec program to capture the standard output. Then the value will be stored(appended) in a string slice for display at the end of the program.

Here you go!

 package main

 import (
  "bufio"
  "fmt"
  "os"
  "os/exec"
 )

 func handleError(err error) {
  if err != nil {
 fmt.Println(err)
 os.Exit(1)
  }
 }

 func main() {

  cmd := exec.Command("whoami")

  // capture the output and error pipes
  stdout, err := cmd.StdoutPipe()
  handleError(err)

  err = cmd.Start()
  handleError(err)

  defer cmd.Wait()
  buff := bufio.NewScanner(stdout)

  var returnText []string

  for buff.Scan() {
 returnText = append(returnText, buff.Text())
  }

  fmt.Println(returnText)
 }

Happy coding!

References:

https://www.socketloop.com/tutorials/golang-capture-stdout-of-a-child-process-and-act-according-to-the-result

https://www.socketloop.com/tutorials/golang-pipe-output-from-one-os-exec-shell-command-to-another-command