I’m trying to use `readLine()` to read user input....

# announcements

[Casey Kulm]

I’m trying to use readLine() to read user input. It is working fine when I run from Android Studio, although when I run from CLI with ./gradlew run it seems to not be blocking to wait for readLine(), and is immediately returning null. Is there something I can do to achieve the expected behavior from CLI?

[dpk]

i don’t know if this is the solution, but searching for “gradle run stdin” got me this: https://discuss.gradle.org/t/why-doesnt-system-in-read-block-when-im-using-gradle/3308/2 — i think “stdin” is the key term to use here.

[dpk]

and it makes sense — if i type something while gradle is running, whatever i’m typing doesn’t make it to the shell after it exits. it’s consumed by gradle.

[Casey Kulm]

Hmm okay that did solve blocking for STD in now. Now it’s awkwardly showing Enter: =====--> 85% EXECUTING [10s] all the time, and not actually displaying what I’m typing 😕

[dpk]

i’m out of my depth at this point. fwiw, when i’ve written command line stuff, i’ve built it using gradle and then ran it using java -jar .... awkward but bash aliases can help there.

[Casey Kulm]

Awesome that is exactly what I’m looking for, thanks @dpk

[Casey Kulm]

Btw I was able to get it to work with ./gradlew run --console plain, and

[Casey Kulm]

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'application'

run {
    standardInput = <http://System.in|System.in>
    mainClassName = "com.mycompany.MainKt"
}

[Casey Kulm]

--console plain made it so that the gradle pretty text didn’t disrupt input

[Casey Kulm]

And the application plugin with the standardInput option made it so that readLine() wouldn’t immediately quit

[Casey Kulm]

And the application plugin with the mainClassName option paired up the main class with the gradle run task

[dpk]

awesome. i’ll keep that in mind next time i have to create a command line app (probably to test one of the non-android modules in my android app).