Java: Distingushing between end of one message and end of the stream

Question

I'm writing a small program writing to the command line, using SSH, and therefore usually getting output after some input.

So now I'm reading that output like this:

    new Thread() {
        public void run() {
            int character;
            try {
                while ((character = output.read()) != -1) {
                    string += character;
                }
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }.start();

So far, I'm controlling the end of the stream. However, I would like to be able to estimate the end of one message (which doesn't have to be just one line) by which I mean the remote output to the sent input, respectively.

Is there a possibility to do this?

For instance, when I login via SSH, I send the command "ssh user@server", and now that reading thread should only read the "user@server's password:" message and then free the object's lock so that the writing stream can go on. But I don't know how to do that...

Answer 1

There is no such thing as a message in TCP. It is a byte-stream. If you want messages, you have to define and implement them yourself. In some simple cases, a line is a message. As you've said that isn't the case here, it is up to you to define.