Generally speaking, RunShellScript works very well.

However, in some instances, it will hang. Today I managed to find out that it will hang if the data returned is large.

For instance:

RunShellScript("cat small_file")

is ok, but

RunShellScript("cat larger_file")

is not

This function will wait for the shell script to finish and return, so if you are working with larger files it may take more time for the shell script to process. If the shell script hangs or has a large delay in it it can seem like filemaker is freezing while the function waits for a return command. Have you tried running these functions outside of filemaker to see how long they take?

i don't think that the processing time is the issue. When a hang occurs it is for several minutes before i just kill it.

the same process takes under a second to run in the terminal. i don't think the issue here is the amount of processing being done, it is the amount of data returned by the plugin.

Can you post the log file after the next time you encounter the problem? It's in ~/Library/Logs/360PluginLogs.

May 2, 2010 1:58:21 PM com.prosc.fmkit.PluginBridge doFunction

INFO: === doFunction RunShellScript called on thread: AWT-AppKit===

May 2, 2010 1:58:21 PM com.prosc.fmkit.PluginBridge setRootFrameParent

CONFIG: Current window changed from  0  to 0; setting root frame parent

May 2, 2010 1:58:21 PM com.prosc.fmkit.PluginBridge setRootFrameParent

INFO: Setting root frame to window 0 / N/A o / thread ID: 0 / is child: false

How big is the large file that is causing it to hang? I'm trying to reproduce the problem here. Also, what OS is running?

Well it's weird. Now I'm having trouble trying to reproduce it. It will happen when running certain commands that work perfectly well via applescript and via terminal but I can't isolate exactly what causes the problem here.

This is with FMPA11 OS 10.5.8