Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] use a outside program from ethereal code

[Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>]

bujecas@xxxxxx wrote:

> I would like to call a Ruby program from a dissector code of Ethereal.
> It's possible to do this? How?

Ethereal doesn't have an embedded {Perl,Python,Ruby,Lua,REXX,Visual 
Basic,...} interpreter, so there's no way to call a program in one of 
those languages so that it runs in the Ethereal process itself.

On platforms that have, for example, "popen()", it might be possible to 
run the Ruby interpreter and the program in a *separate* process and 
collect the output from that process; however, I don't know whether, for 
example, you can use "popen()" in a Windows GUI application, so it might 
not be possible to make this work on all platforms - and, of course, it 
wouldn't be possible to make it work on a platform without a Ruby 
interpreter. :-)

If you're doing this for a private version of Ethereal, those might not 
be issues.  If, however, this would be intended for the standard 
Ethereal release, those issues would have to be addressed somehow.