Call an engine from BASIC?!

[JBNielsen]

Is it possible to call an engine (fx stockfish) from a compiled QB64 basic-program with the [url]https://www.qb64.org/wiki/CHAIN command?
I want the positions in a game analysed for x seconds and get the score and the main line in return.

[Deberger]

http://www.qb64.org/wiki/SHELL

[JBNielsen]

http://www.qb64.org/wiki/SHELL

Thanks.
So you think it is possible with SHELL?!
Do you know what the parameters should look like?
Or where I can read about it?

[Dann Corbit]

The link he gave is the manual page.
It includes syntax and example code.

[mar]

http://www.qb64.org/wiki/SHELL

but how does it help you loading and communicating with an engine?
you need to create a new process for the engine, setup pipes so that you can communicate with it. depending on what you actually need, it may be a good idea to have a thread for blocking reads to be able to process engine output in the background etc.
executing engine binary itself won't help, unless you can tell it to do something via commandline. if you need more commands, this would be horribly inefficient

[JBNielsen]

The link he gave is the manual page.
It includes syntax and example code.

Thanks; I know.

But I don't know what Stockfish requires to communicate.

[JBNielsen]

http://www.qb64.org/wiki/SHELL

but how does it help you loading and communicating with an engine?
you need to create a new process for the engine, setup pipes so that you can communicate with it. depending on what you actually need, it may be a good idea to have a thread for blocking reads to be able to process engine output in the background etc.
executing engine binary itself won't help, unless you can tell it to do something via commandline. if you need more commands, this would be horribly inefficient

I would like to put this function into a single program:
[url]http://talkchess.com/forum3/viewtopic.p ... 21#p483721

[Deberger]

The link he gave is the manual page.
It includes syntax and example code.

Thanks; I know.

But I don't know what Stockfish requires to communicate.

This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Chess_Interface

[Dann Corbit]

You can use the bench command to have Stockfish process one or more EPD records.

[JBNielsen]

You can use the bench command to have Stockfish process one or more EPD records.

I have tried it manually and it works fine (though my old SF does not know the 'movetime' parameter).

Thanks; perhaps I can use that.