The Wolfram Language allows you to start and control external processes within the operating system, and exchange data with them through streams.

One-Shot Program Execution

RunProcess — run an external process, returning full information

Run — run an external process without returning information

RunThrough — run an external process using stdin and stdout

Import   ▪ Export   ▪ $SystemShell

Ongoing Interaction with Running Processes

Processes — list of current external processes

StartProcess — start an external process, returning a process object

ProcessObject — an object representing an external process, allowing reading and writing

ProcessStatus   ▪ ProcessInformation   ▪ KillProcess

ProcessConnection — get a handle to a specified stream associated with a process

ReadString   ▪ ReadLine   ▪ WriteLine   ▪ ReadByteArray   ▪ BinaryRead   ▪ BinaryWrite   ▪ EndOfBuffer

Processes on Remote Systems

RemoteConnect   ▪ RemoteRunProcess   ▪ RemoteConnectionObject

System Processes Information

SystemProcesses — list of running processes as symbolic process objects

SystemProcessData — dataset of current running processes