How to execute shell command in Javascript

Question

I want to write a JavaScript function which will execute the system shell commands (ls for example) and return the value.

How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

Many of the other answers here seem to address this issue from the perspective of a JavaScript function running in the browser. I'll shoot and answer assuming that when the asker said "Shell Script" he meant a Node.js backend JavaScript. Possibly using commander.js to use frame your code :)

You could use the child_process module from node's API. I pasted the example code below.

var exec = require('child_process').exec, child;

child = exec('cat *.js bad_file | wc -l',
    function (error, stdout, stderr) {
        console.log('stdout: ' + stdout);
        console.log('stderr: ' + stderr);
        if (error !== null) {
             console.log('exec error: ' + error);
        }
    });
 child();

Hope this helps!