Ignoring all but the (multi-line) results of the last query sent to a program - bash

Question

I have an executable that accepts queries from stdin and responds to them, reading until EOF. Additionally I have an input file and a special command, let's call those EXEC, FILE and CMD respectively.
What I need to do is:
Pass FILE to EXEC as input.
Disregard all the output corresponding to commands read from FILE (/dev/null/).
Pass CMD as the last command.
Fetch output for the last command and save it in a variable.
EXEC's output can be multiline for each query.
I know how to pass FILE + CMD into the EXEC:
echo ${CMD} | cat ${FILE} - | ${EXEC}
but I have no idea how to fetch only output resulting from CMD.
Is there a magical one-liner that does this?
After looking around I've found the following partial solution:
mkfifo mypipe
(tail -f mypipe) | ${EXEC} &
cat ${FILE} | while read line; do
echo ${line} > mypipe
done
echo ${CMD} > mypipe
This allows me to redirect my input, but now the output gets printed to screen. I want to ignore all the output produced by EXEC in the while loop and get only what it prints for the last line.
I tried what first came into my mind, which is:
(tail -f mypipe) | ${EXEC} > somefile &
But it didn't work, the file was empty.

Answer 1

This is race-prone -- I'd suggest putting in a delay after the kill, or using an explicit sigil to determine when it's been received. That said:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# route FD 4 to your output routine
exec 4> >(
output=; trap 'output=1' USR1
while IFS= read -r line; do
[[ $output ]] && printf '%s\n' "$line"
done
); out_pid=$!
# Capture the PID for the process substitution above; note that this requires a very
# new version of bash (4.4?)
[[ $out_pid ]] || { echo "ERROR: Your bash version is too old" >&2; exit 1; }
# Run your program in another process substitution, and close the parent's handle on FD 4
exec 3> >("$EXEC" >&4) 4>&-
# cat your file to FD 3...
cat "$file" >&3
# UGLY HACK: Wait to let your program finish flushing output from those commands
sleep 0.1
# notify the subshell writing output to disk that the ignored input is done...
kill -USR1 "$out_pid"
# UGLY HACK: Wait to let the subprocess actually receive the signal and set output=1
sleep 0.1
# ...and then write the command for which you actually want content logged.
echo "command" >&3
In validating this answer, I'm doing the following:
EXEC=stub_function
stub_function() {
local count line
count=0
while IFS= read -r line; do
(( ++count ))
printf '%s: %s\n' "$count" "$line"
done
}
cat >file <<EOF
do-not-log-my-output-1
do-not-log-my-output-2
do-not-log-my-output-3
EOF
file=file
export -f stub_function
export file EXEC
Output is only:
4: command

Answer 2

You could pipe it into a sed:
var=$(YOUR COMMAND | sed '$!d')
This will put only the last line into the variable

Answer 3

I think, that your proram EXEC does something special (open connection or remember state). When that is not the case, you can use
${EXEC} < ${FILE} > /dev/null
myvar=$(echo ${CMD} | ${EXEC})
Or with normal commands:
# Do not use (printf "==%s==\n" 1 2 3 ; printf "oo%soo\n" 4 5 6) | cat
printf "==%s==\n" 1 2 3 | cat > /dev/null
myvar=$(printf "oo%soo\n" 4 5 6 | cat)
When you need to give all input to one process, perhaps you can think of a marker that you can filter on:
(printf "==%s==\n" 1 2 3 ; printf "%s\n" "marker"; printf "oo%soo\n" 4 5 6) | cat | sed '1,/marker/ d'
You should examine your EXEC what could be used. When it is running SQL, you might use something like
(cat ${FILE}; echo 'select "DamonMarker" from dual;' ; echo ${CMD} ) |
${EXEC} | sed '1,/DamonMarker/ d'
and write this in a var with
myvar=$( (cat ${FILE}; echo 'select "DamonMarker" from dual;' ; echo ${CMD} ) |
${EXEC} | sed '1,/DamonMarker/ d' )