Control / exec · All operations

Run an external command

Run an external job or process, trigger another pipeline, version control.

Status

In arcform

A feature, not a step

It lives in how a Protocol runs. src/manifest.rs in arcform at fc62d6f

Shape of the result
not a data operation
Level
not a step

Variants

Encrypt or decrypt a file

Encrypt, sign, decrypt or verify a file with PGP or GnuPG.

Control the engine

Other engine and platform commands: memory hints, maintenance pragmas, API calls and thread views.

Refresh a report or dataset

Trigger a refresh of a dashboard, extract or dataset in a reporting tool.

Run another pipeline

Trigger another workflow, flow, process or dbt project, now or on a schedule, and route on its outcome.

Commit or roll back a transaction

Begin, commit or roll back a database or messaging transaction.

Commit to version control

Commit files or the pipeline itself to a Git repository, or read its branches and commits.

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 86.2% of 312 rows (exact class, version 2).

Alteryx Designer (8)
  • Automation Anywhere 360read 2026-09-27

    Run Automation Anywhere bots from a workflow; unsupported from Designer 2024.1

  • GitHub Commitread 2026-09-27

    Commit a file, a directory or the workflow itself to a GitHub repository

  • GitHub Get Last Commitread 2026-09-27

    Return the details of the last commit of a GitHub repository

  • License APIread 2026-09-27

    Call the Alteryx licensing portal APIs to manage licences

  • Power Automateread 2026-09-27

    Run a Microsoft Power Automate flow on incoming data and pass the result downstream

  • Run Commandread 2026-09-27

    Run an external command-line program as input, output or intermediary

  • Runnerread 2026-09-27

    Run another workflow, app or macro and route on its success or failure

  • Server APIread 2026-09-27

    Call Alteryx Server API endpoints from a workflow

Apache DataFusion (2)
  • cacheread 2026-09-27

    DataFrame method: Execute and keep the result as an in-memory table

  • collectread 2026-09-27

    DataFrame method: Execute and buffer all result batches in memory

Apache Hop (12)
Apache NiFi (6)
  • Cloud AI service job processors (family)read 2026-09-27

    12 processors, start and poll jobs on AWS Polly, Textract, Transcribe, Translate and Google Vision

  • ExecuteProcessread 2026-09-27

    Run an operating system command and write its output to a FlowFile

  • ExecuteStreamCommandread 2026-09-27

    Pass FlowFile content to an external command and capture what the command returns

  • Flow Analysis Rules (family)read 2026-09-27

    5 components that produce rule violations for flow designs that break a configured rule

  • Flow Registry Clients (family)read 2026-09-27

    5 components that version-control flows in GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps or NiFi Registry

  • PutLambdaread 2026-09-27

    Invoke an AWS Lambda function with the FlowFile's JSON content

Azure Data Factory (13)
Bruin (4)
  • emr_serverless.sparkread 2026-09-27

    Trigger an existing PySpark script or JAR as an EMR Serverless job

  • quicksight.datasetread 2026-09-27

    Represent a QuickSight SPICE dataset and trigger its refresh, incremental or full

  • tableau.datasourceread 2026-09-27

    Represent a Tableau data source and trigger its extract refresh, incremental or full

  • tableau.workbookread 2026-09-27

    Represent a Tableau workbook and trigger its refresh; the type tableau is an alias

DuckDB (2)
  • CALLread 2026-09-27

    Invoke a table function as a statement

  • Transaction Managementread 2026-09-27

    Begin, commit and roll back a transaction

Duckle (2)
  • DuckLake Maintenanceread 2026-09-25

    run one DuckLake maintenance function (compact, expire, clean up) and emit its result rows

  • dbtread 2026-09-25

    run a dbt model or project against the run database

EasyMorph (9)
  • EasyMorph Server commandread 2026-09-27

    Trigger a task, or upload, download or delete a file, on a remote EasyMorph Server

  • Excel commandread 2026-09-27

    List sheets and ranges, run a VBA macro, rename or delete a sheet, recalculate a workbook (paid editions only)

  • Iterate programread 2026-09-27

    Run an external application once per row of the table (paid editions only)

  • Power BI commandread 2026-09-27

    Trigger a Power BI action such as a dataset refresh

  • Qlik Cloud commandread 2026-09-27

    Execute a Qlik Cloud command remotely

  • Qlik Sense commandread 2026-09-27

    Execute a Qlik Sense command remotely

  • Run programread 2026-09-27

    Run an external application once (paid editions only)

  • SSH commandread 2026-09-27

    Run commands on a remote computer over SSH (paid editions only)

  • Tableau Server commandread 2026-09-27

    Trigger an extract refresh or run a flow on Tableau Server or Online

KNIME Analytics Platform (9)
Pentaho Data Integration (4)
Polars (3)
RapidMiner Studio (22)
subtoken (2)
  • drop_fts_indexread 2026-09-27

    Pragma that removes a table's full-text index

  • hnsw_compact_indexread 2026-09-27

    Pragma that re-compacts an HNSW index, pruning items marked deleted

Talend (21)
VisiData (2)
  • threads-allread 2026-09-23

    Open Threads Sheet of async threads for all sheets

  • threads-sheetread 2026-09-23

    Open Threads Sheet of async threads for current sheet

Yggdrasil Decision Forests (2)

Background

Spawning a child process delegates some work to a new process, which passes an exit status back to its parent process when it finishes.[1] An exit status, also called an exit code or exit value, is an integer that a terminated process makes available to its parent process or caller.[1] Returning zero to the parent process to signal success is common programming practice for a child process.[1]

When to use it

The specific set of exit codes a program returns is unique to that program, and a code typically indicates success or failure.[1] For a shell, a command that exits with a zero exit status has succeeded, and a nonzero exit status indicates failure.[1] A shell should return 127 when a command is not found and 126 when a command is found but is not executable, though not all shells do.[1] Read what a program says its nonzero codes mean before routing on them, and treat any nonzero code as a failure unless the program says otherwise. (Meridian's view)

Standard streams are the input and output channels connected between a program and its environment when it begins execution: standard input (stdin), standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr).[2] Keep what an external command writes to stderr alongside its exit status in the record of the run, so that a failure can be read later. (Meridian's view)

Reach for an external command when another program or platform already does the work well, and record which program it is, and its version, alongside the step. (Meridian's view)

The method

When a computer program is executed, the operating system creates a process, an abstract entity in which the book-keeping for that program is maintained.[1] In multitasking operating systems such as Unix or Linux, new processes can be created by active processes, and child processes run concurrently with their parent.[1] A finishing child process calls the exit system call, which passes its exit status back to the parent, and the parent can retrieve that value with the wait system call.[1] Besides the exit status, other information may be available to the parent process, such as whether the child exited normally or by a signal.[1] When a signal numbered N terminates a command, a shell sets its exit status variable $? to a value greater than 128, and most shells use 128 plus N.[1]

A child process inherits the standard streams of its parent process.[2] The output stream of one program can be redirected to be the input stream of another, which many operating systems express with the vertical bar, often called the pipeline character.[2]

Sources

  1. [1]Exit status - Wikipediasecondary source
  2. [2]Standard streams - Wikipediasecondary source