The spawn() function of the child_process library is very similar to the exec() function, except that instead of returning buffers, it returns a stream. Streams are extremely handy for certain circumstances. For example, what if we wanted to take the output of one command and send that as the input for a second command? The spawn() function can help with this.
In our example, we will use spawn to execute a simple CoffeeScript statement and retrieve the results.
We will be using the native Node library for this example.
In this example, we will demonstrate the use of spawn() to execute a CoffeeScript statement:
Begin by loading the
child_processlibrary and grabbing itsspawn()function:spawn = require('child_process').spawnDefine our CoffeeScript statement:
coffeeCode = 'console.log "The answer to life is #{6 * 7}"'In our example, we want two processes:
echoandcoffee. Theechoprocess will place our CoffeeScript statement into...