- NAME
- send — Execute a command in a different application
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- -async
- -displayof pathName
- --
- APPLICATION
NAMES
- DISABLING
SENDS
- SECURITY
- EXAMPLE
- KEYWORDS
send — Execute a command in a different application
send ?options? app cmd ?arg ...?
This command arranges for cmd (and args) to be
executed in the application named by app. It returns the
result or error from that command execution. App may be the
name of any application whose main window is on the display
containing the sender's main window; it need not be within the same
process. If no arg arguments are present, then the command
to be executed is contained entirely within the cmd
argument. If one or more args are present, they are
concatenated to form the command to be executed, just as for the
eval command.
If the initial arguments of the command begin with “-” they are
treated as options. The following options are currently
defined:
- -async
- Requests asynchronous invocation. In this case the send
command will complete immediately without waiting for cmd to
complete in the target application; no result will be available and
errors in the sent command will be ignored. If the target
application is in the same process as the sending application then
the -async option is ignored.
- -displayof pathName
- Specifies that the target application's main window is on the
display of the window given by pathName, instead of the
display containing the application's main window.
- --
- Serves no purpose except to terminate the list of options. This
option is needed only if app could contain a leading “-”
character.
The name of an application is set initially from the name of the
program or script that created the application. You can query and
change the name of an application with the tk appname command.
If the send command is removed from an application (e.g.
with the command rename send {}) then the application
will not respond to incoming send requests anymore, nor will it be
able to issue outgoing requests. Communication can be reenabled by
invoking the tk appname
command.
The send command is potentially a serious security loophole.
On Unix, any application that can connect to your X server can send
scripts to your applications. These incoming scripts can use Tcl to
read and write your files and invoke subprocesses under your name.
Host-based access control such as that provided by xhost is
particularly insecure, since it allows anyone with an account on
particular hosts to connect to your server, and if disabled it
allows anyone anywhere to connect to your server. In order to
provide at least a small amount of security, Tk checks the access
control being used by the server and rejects incoming sends unless
(a) xhost-style access control is enabled (i.e. only certain
hosts can establish connections) and (b) the list of enabled hosts
is empty. This means that applications cannot connect to your
server unless they use some other form of authorization such as
that provide by xauth. Under Windows, send is
currently disabled. Most of the functionality is provided by the
dde command instead.
This script fragment can be used to make an application that only
runs once on a particular display.
if {[tk appname FoobarApp] ne "FoobarApp"} {
send -async FoobarApp RemoteStart $argv
exit
}
# The command that will be called remotely, which raises
# the application main window and opens the requested files
proc RemoteStart args {
raise .
foreach filename $args {
OpenFile $filename
}
}
application, dde, name, remote execution,
security, send
Copyright © 1990-1994 The Regents of the
University of California.
Copyright © 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc.