View Source System (Elixir v1.14.1)
The System
module provides functions that interact directly
with the VM or the host system.
Time
The System
module also provides functions that work with time,
returning different times kept by the system with support for
different time units.
One of the complexities in relying on system times is that they may be adjusted. For example, when you enter and leave daylight saving time, the system clock will be adjusted, often adding or removing one hour. We call such changes "time warps". In order to understand how such changes may be harmful, imagine the following code:
## DO NOT DO THIS
prev = System.os_time()
# ... execute some code ...
next = System.os_time()
diff = next - prev
If, while the code is executing, the system clock changes,
some code that executed in 1 second may be reported as taking
over 1 hour! To address such concerns, the VM provides a
monotonic time via System.monotonic_time/0
which never
decreases and does not leap:
## DO THIS
prev = System.monotonic_time()
# ... execute some code ...
next = System.monotonic_time()
diff = next - prev
Generally speaking, the VM provides three time measurements:
os_time/0
- the time reported by the operating system (OS). This time may be adjusted forwards or backwards in time with no limitation;system_time/0
- the VM view of theos_time/0
. The system time and operating system time may not match in case of time warps although the VM works towards aligning them. This time is not monotonic (i.e., it may decrease) as its behaviour is configured by the VM time warp mode;monotonic_time/0
- a monotonically increasing time provided by the Erlang VM.
The time functions in this module work in the :native
unit
(unless specified otherwise), which is operating system dependent. Most of
the time, all calculations are done in the :native
unit, to
avoid loss of precision, with convert_time_unit/3
being
invoked at the end to convert to a specific time unit like
:millisecond
or :microsecond
. See the time_unit/0
type for
more information.
For a more complete rundown on the VM support for different times, see the chapter on time and time correction in the Erlang docs.
Link to this section Summary
Types
The time unit to be passed to functions like monotonic_time/1
and others.
Functions
Lists command line arguments.
Modifies command line arguments.
Registers a program exit handler function.
Elixir build information.
Executes the given command
with args
.
Returns the endianness the system was compiled with.
Converts time
from time unit from_unit
to time unit to_unit
.
Current working directory.
Current working directory, exception on error.
Deletes an environment variable.
Returns the endianness.
Returns the value of the given environment variable or :error
if not found.
Returns the value of the given environment variable or raises if not found.
Locates an executable on the system.
Returns all system environment variables.
Returns the value of the given environment variable.
Erlang VM process identifier.
Immediately halts the Erlang runtime system.
Returns the current monotonic time in the :native
time unit.
Returns the current monotonic time in the given time unit.
Checks if the system will halt or not at the end of ARGV processing.
Marks if the system should halt or not at the end of ARGV processing.
Returns the current operating system (OS) time.
Returns the current operating system (OS) time in the given time unit
.
Returns the Erlang/OTP release number.
Returns the operating system PID for the current Erlang runtime system instance.
Sets multiple environment variables.
Sets an environment variable value.
Restarts all applications in the Erlang runtime system.
Returns the number of schedulers in the VM.
Returns the number of schedulers online in the VM.
Executes the given command
in the OS shell.
Deprecated mechanism to retrieve the last exception stacktrace.
Carefully stops the Erlang runtime system.
Returns the current system time in the :native
time unit.
Returns the current system time in the given time unit.
Returns the current time offset between the Erlang VM monotonic time and the Erlang VM system time.
Returns the current time offset between the Erlang VM monotonic time and the Erlang VM system time.
Writable temporary directory.
Writable temporary directory, exception on error.
Traps the given signal
to execute the fun
.
Generates and returns an integer that is unique in the current runtime instance.
Removes a previously registered signal
with id
.
User home directory.
User home directory, exception on error.
Elixir version information.
Link to this section Types
@type signal() ::
:sigabrt
| :sigalrm
| :sigchld
| :sighup
| :sigquit
| :sigstop
| :sigterm
| :sigtstp
| :sigusr1
| :sigusr2
@type time_unit() :: :second | :millisecond | :microsecond | :nanosecond | pos_integer()
The time unit to be passed to functions like monotonic_time/1
and others.
The :second
, :millisecond
, :microsecond
and :nanosecond
time
units controls the return value of the functions that accept a time unit.
A time unit can also be a strictly positive integer. In this case, it
represents the "parts per second": the time will be returned in 1 / parts_per_second
seconds. For example, using the :millisecond
time unit
is equivalent to using 1000
as the time unit (as the time will be returned
in 1/1000 seconds - milliseconds).
Link to this section Functions
@spec argv() :: [String.t()]
Lists command line arguments.
Returns the list of command line arguments passed to the program.
@spec argv([String.t()]) :: :ok
Modifies command line arguments.
Changes the list of command line arguments. Use it with caution, as it destroys any previous argv information.
@spec at_exit((non_neg_integer() -> any())) :: :ok
Registers a program exit handler function.
Registers a function that will be invoked at the end of an Elixir script.
A script is typically started via the command line via the elixir
and
mix
executables.
The handler always executes in a different process from the one it was registered in. As a consequence, any resources managed by the calling process (ETS tables, open files, and others) won't be available by the time the handler function is invoked.
The function must receive the exit status code as an argument.
If the VM terminates programmatically, via System.stop/1
, System.halt/1
,
or exit signals, the at_exit/1
callbacks are not executed.
@spec build_info() :: %{ build: String.t(), date: String.t(), revision: String.t(), version: String.t(), otp_release: String.t() }
Elixir build information.
Returns a map with the Elixir version, the Erlang/OTP release it was compiled with, a short Git revision hash and the date and time it was built.
Every value in the map is a string, and these are:
:build
- the Elixir version, short Git revision hash and Erlang/OTP release it was compiled with:date
- a string representation of the ISO8601 date and time it was built:otp_release
- OTP release it was compiled with:revision
- short Git revision hash. If Git was not available at building time, it is set to""
:version
- the Elixir version
One should not rely on the specific formats returned by each of those fields.
Instead one should use specialized functions, such as version/0
to retrieve
the Elixir version and otp_release/0
to retrieve the Erlang/OTP release.
Examples
iex> System.build_info()
%{
build: "1.9.0-dev (772a00a0c) (compiled with Erlang/OTP 21)",
date: "2018-12-24T01:09:21Z",
otp_release: "21",
revision: "772a00a0c",
version: "1.9.0-dev"
}
@spec cmd( binary(), [binary()], keyword() ) :: {Collectable.t(), exit_status :: non_neg_integer()}
Executes the given command
with args
.
command
is expected to be an executable available in PATH
unless an absolute path is given.
args
must be a list of binaries which the executable will receive
as its arguments as is. This means that:
- environment variables will not be interpolated
- wildcard expansion will not happen (unless
Path.wildcard/2
is used explicitly) - arguments do not need to be escaped or quoted for shell safety
This function returns a tuple containing the collected result and the command exit status.
Internally, this function uses a Port
for interacting with the
outside world. However, if you plan to run a long-running program,
ports guarantee stdin/stdout devices will be closed but it does not
automatically terminate the program. The documentation for the
Port
module describes this problem and possible solutions under
the "Zombie processes" section.
Examples
iex> System.cmd("echo", ["hello"])
{"hello\n", 0}
iex> System.cmd("echo", ["hello"], env: [{"MIX_ENV", "test"}])
{"hello\n", 0}
If you want to stream the output to Standard IO as it arrives:
iex> System.cmd("echo", ["hello"], into: IO.stream())
hello
{%IO.Stream{}, 0}
Options
:into
- injects the result into the given collectable, defaults to""
:cd
- the directory to run the command in:env
- an enumerable of tuples containing environment key-value as binary. The child process inherits all environment variables from its parent process, the Elixir application, except those overwritten or cleared using this option. Specify a value ofnil
to clear (unset) an environment variable, which is useful for preventing credentials passed to the application from leaking into child processes.:arg0
- sets the command arg0:stderr_to_stdout
- redirects stderr to stdout whentrue
:parallelism
- whentrue
, the VM will schedule port tasks to improve parallelism in the system. If set tofalse
, the VM will try to perform commands immediately, improving latency at the expense of parallelism. The default can be set on system startup by passing the "+spp" argument to--erl
.
Error reasons
If invalid arguments are given, ArgumentError
is raised by
System.cmd/3
. System.cmd/3
also expects a strict set of
options and will raise if unknown or invalid options are given.
Furthermore, System.cmd/3
may fail with one of the POSIX reasons
detailed below:
:system_limit
- all available ports in the Erlang emulator are in use:enomem
- there was not enough memory to create the port:eagain
- there are no more available operating system processes:enametoolong
- the external command given was too long:emfile
- there are no more available file descriptors (for the operating system process that the Erlang emulator runs in):enfile
- the file table is full (for the entire operating system):eacces
- the command does not point to an executable file:enoent
- the command does not point to an existing file
Shell commands
If you desire to execute a trusted command inside a shell, with pipes,
redirecting and so on, please check shell/2
.
@spec compiled_endianness() :: :little | :big
Returns the endianness the system was compiled with.
Converts time
from time unit from_unit
to time unit to_unit
.
The result is rounded via the floor function.
convert_time_unit/3
accepts an additional time unit (other than the
ones in the time_unit/0
type) called :native
. :native
is the time
unit used by the Erlang runtime system. It's determined when the runtime
starts and stays the same until the runtime is stopped, but could differ
the next time the runtime is started on the same machine. For this reason,
you should use this function to convert :native
time units to a predictable
unit before you display them to humans.
To determine how many seconds the :native
unit represents in your current
runtime, you can call this function to convert 1 second to the :native
time unit: System.convert_time_unit(1, :second, :native)
.
@spec cwd() :: String.t() | nil
Current working directory.
Returns the current working directory or nil
if one
is not available.
@spec cwd!() :: String.t()
Current working directory, exception on error.
Returns the current working directory or raises RuntimeError
.
@spec delete_env(String.t()) :: :ok
Deletes an environment variable.
Removes the variable varname
from the environment.
@spec endianness() :: :little | :big
Returns the endianness.
Returns the value of the given environment variable or :error
if not found.
If the environment variable varname
is set, then {:ok, value}
is returned
where value
is a string. If varname
is not set, :error
is returned.
Examples
iex> System.fetch_env("PORT")
{:ok, "4000"}
iex> System.fetch_env("NOT_SET")
:error
Returns the value of the given environment variable or raises if not found.
Same as get_env/1
but raises instead of returning nil
when the variable is
not set.
Examples
iex> System.fetch_env!("PORT")
"4000"
iex> System.fetch_env!("NOT_SET")
** (ArgumentError) could not fetch environment variable "NOT_SET" because it is not set
Locates an executable on the system.
This function looks up an executable program given
its name using the environment variable PATH on Windows and Unix-like
operating systems. It also considers the proper executable
extension for each operating system, so for Windows it will try to
lookup files with .com
, .cmd
or similar extensions.
Returns all system environment variables.
The returned value is a map containing name-value pairs. Variable names and their values are strings.
Returns the value of the given environment variable.
The returned value of the environment variable
varname
is a string. If the environment variable
is not set, returns the string specified in default
or
nil
if none is specified.
Examples
iex> System.get_env("PORT")
"4000"
iex> System.get_env("NOT_SET")
nil
iex> System.get_env("NOT_SET", "4001")
"4001"
@spec get_pid() :: binary()
Erlang VM process identifier.
Returns the process identifier of the current Erlang emulator in the format most commonly used by the operating system environment.
For more information, see :os.getpid/0
.
@spec halt(non_neg_integer() | binary() | :abort) :: no_return()
Immediately halts the Erlang runtime system.
Terminates the Erlang runtime system without properly shutting down
applications and ports. Please see stop/1
for a careful shutdown of the
system.
status
must be a non-negative integer, the atom :abort
or a binary.
If an integer, the runtime system exits with the integer value which is returned to the operating system.
If
:abort
, the runtime system aborts producing a core dump, if that is enabled in the operating system.If a string, an Erlang crash dump is produced with status as slogan, and then the runtime system exits with status code 1.
Note that on many platforms, only the status codes 0-255 are supported by the operating system.
For more information, see :erlang.halt/1
.
Examples
System.halt(0)
System.halt(1)
System.halt(:abort)
@spec monotonic_time() :: integer()
Returns the current monotonic time in the :native
time unit.
This time is monotonically increasing and starts in an unspecified point in time.
Inlined by the compiler.
Returns the current monotonic time in the given time unit.
This time is monotonically increasing and starts in an unspecified point in time.
@spec no_halt() :: boolean()
Checks if the system will halt or not at the end of ARGV processing.
@spec no_halt(boolean()) :: :ok
Marks if the system should halt or not at the end of ARGV processing.
@spec os_time() :: integer()
Returns the current operating system (OS) time.
The result is returned in the :native
time unit.
This time may be adjusted forwards or backwards in time with no limitation and is not monotonic.
Inlined by the compiler.
Returns the current operating system (OS) time in the given time unit
.
This time may be adjusted forwards or backwards in time with no limitation and is not monotonic.
@spec otp_release() :: String.t()
Returns the Erlang/OTP release number.
@spec pid() :: String.t()
Returns the operating system PID for the current Erlang runtime system instance.
Returns a string containing the (usually) numerical identifier for a process.
On Unix-like operating systems, this is typically the return value of the getpid()
system call.
On Windows, the process ID as returned by the GetCurrentProcessId()
system
call is used.
Examples
System.pid()
@spec put_env(Enumerable.t()) :: :ok
Sets multiple environment variables.
Sets a new value for each environment variable corresponding
to each {key, value}
pair in enum
. Keys are automatically
converted to strings, values are sent as is. nil
values erase
the given keys.
Sets an environment variable value.
Sets a new value
for the environment variable varname
.
@spec restart() :: :ok
Restarts all applications in the Erlang runtime system.
All applications are taken down smoothly, all code is unloaded, and all ports are closed before the system starts all applications once again.
Examples
System.restart()
@spec schedulers() :: pos_integer()
Returns the number of schedulers in the VM.
@spec schedulers_online() :: pos_integer()
Returns the number of schedulers online in the VM.
@spec shell( binary(), keyword() ) :: {Collectable.t(), exit_status :: non_neg_integer()}
Executes the given command
in the OS shell.
It uses sh
for Unix-like systems and cmd
for Windows.
Important:: Use this function with care. In particular, never pass untrusted user input to this function, as the user would be able to perform "command injection attacks" by executing any code directly on the machine. Generally speaking, prefer to use
cmd/3
over this function.
Examples
iex> System.shell("echo hello")
{"hello\n", 0}
If you want to stream the output to Standard IO as it arrives:
iex> System.shell("echo hello", into: IO.stream())
hello
{%IO.Stream{}, 0}
Options
It accepts the same options as cmd/3
(except for arg0
).
It also accepts the following exclusive options:
:close_stdin
(since v1.14.1) - if the stdin should be closed on Unix systems, forcing any command that waits on stdin to immediately terminate. Defaults to false.
Deprecated mechanism to retrieve the last exception stacktrace.
It always return an empty list.
@spec stop(non_neg_integer() | binary()) :: no_return()
Carefully stops the Erlang runtime system.
All applications are taken down smoothly, all code is unloaded, and all ports
are closed before the system terminates by calling halt/1
.
status
must be a non-negative integer or a binary.
If an integer, the runtime system exits with the integer value which is returned to the operating system.
If a binary, an Erlang crash dump is produced with status as slogan, and then the runtime system exits with status code 1.
Note that on many platforms, only the status codes 0-255 are supported by the operating system.
Examples
System.stop(0)
System.stop(1)
@spec system_time() :: integer()
Returns the current system time in the :native
time unit.
It is the VM view of the os_time/0
. They may not match in
case of time warps although the VM works towards aligning
them. This time is not monotonic.
Inlined by the compiler.
Returns the current system time in the given time unit.
It is the VM view of the os_time/0
. They may not match in
case of time warps although the VM works towards aligning
them. This time is not monotonic.
@spec time_offset() :: integer()
Returns the current time offset between the Erlang VM monotonic time and the Erlang VM system time.
The result is returned in the :native
time unit.
See time_offset/1
for more information.
Inlined by the compiler.
Returns the current time offset between the Erlang VM monotonic time and the Erlang VM system time.
The result is returned in the given time unit unit
. The returned
offset, added to an Erlang monotonic time (for instance, one obtained with
monotonic_time/1
), gives the Erlang system time that corresponds
to that monotonic time.
@spec tmp_dir() :: String.t() | nil
Writable temporary directory.
Returns a writable temporary directory. Searches for directories in the following order:
- the directory named by the TMPDIR environment variable
- the directory named by the TEMP environment variable
- the directory named by the TMP environment variable
C:\TMP
on Windows or/tmp
on Unix-like operating systems- as a last resort, the current working directory
Returns nil
if none of the above are writable.
@spec tmp_dir!() :: String.t()
Writable temporary directory, exception on error.
Same as tmp_dir/0
but raises RuntimeError
instead of returning nil
if no temp dir is set.
@spec trap_signal(signal(), id, (() -> :ok)) :: {:ok, id} | {:error, :already_registered} | {:error, :not_sup} when id: term()
Traps the given signal
to execute the fun
.
Important: Trapping signals may have strong implications on how a system shuts down and behave in production and therefore it is extremely discouraged for libraries to set their own traps. Instead, they should redirect users to configure them themselves. The only cases where it is acceptable for libraries to set their own traps is when using Elixir in script mode, such as in
.exs
files and via Mix tasks.
An optional id
that uniquely identifies the function
can be given, otherwise a unique one is automatically
generated. If a previously registered id
is given,
this function returns an error tuple. The id
can be
used to remove a registered signal by calling
untrap_signal/2
.
The given fun
receives no arguments and it must return
:ok
.
It returns {:ok, id}
in case of success,
{:error, :already_registered}
in case the id has already
been registered for the given signal, or {:error, :not_sup}
in case trapping exists is not supported by the current OS.
The first time a signal is trapped, it will override the
default behaviour from the operating system. If the same
signal is trapped multiple times, subsequent functions
given to trap_signal
will execute first. In other
words, you can consider each function is prepended to
the signal handler.
By default, the Erlang VM register traps to the three signals:
:sigstop
- gracefully shuts down the VM withstop/0
:sigquit
- halts the VM viahalt/0
:sigusr1
- halts the VM via status code of 1
Therefore, if you add traps to the signals above, the default behaviour above will be executed after all user signals.
Implementation notes
All signals run from a single process. Therefore, blocking the
fun
will block subsequent traps. It is also not possible to add
or remove traps from within a trap itself.
Internally, this functionality is built on top of :os.set_signal/2
.
When you register a trap, Elixir automatically sets it to :handle
and it reverts it back to :default
once all traps are removed
(except for :sigquit
, :sigterm
, and :sigusr1
which are always
handled). If you or a library call :os.set_signal/2
directly,
it may disable Elixir traps (or Elixir may override your configuration).
@spec unique_integer([:positive | :monotonic]) :: integer()
Generates and returns an integer that is unique in the current runtime instance.
"Unique" means that this function, called with the same list of modifiers
,
will never return the same integer more than once on the current runtime
instance.
If modifiers
is []
, then a unique integer (that can be positive or negative) is returned.
Other modifiers can be passed to change the properties of the returned integer:
:positive
- the returned integer is guaranteed to be positive.:monotonic
- the returned integer is monotonically increasing. This means that, on the same runtime instance (but even on different processes), integers returned using the:monotonic
modifier will always be strictly less than integers returned by successive calls with the:monotonic
modifier.
All modifiers listed above can be combined; repeated modifiers in modifiers
will be ignored.
Inlined by the compiler.
Removes a previously registered signal
with id
.
@spec user_home() :: String.t() | nil
User home directory.
Returns the user home directory (platform independent).
@spec user_home!() :: String.t()
User home directory, exception on error.
Same as user_home/0
but raises RuntimeError
instead of returning nil
if no user home is set.
@spec version() :: String.t()
Elixir version information.
Returns Elixir's version as binary.