Java: Using Piping or any other methods to use the output from one program as input in another.

Hi!

I have a huge problem finding adequate information online so if you
have a solution to these, please please help!!! ( and I would hugely
appreciate it if you could be as detailed as possible; I am still a
java novice.)

I have a serial device and a piece of code involving javax.comm
(serialDemo, one of the examples in the package) and it is totally
possible to get info out of the serial device that way. But I'd like
to use the information displayed on the serialDemo screen as input to
another piece of code which will be building an excel sheet out of
this (grammar?)

In my code, the output from serialDemo is called serialOutput. I just
set it to be a particular array to see if I could create the excel
sheet at all. Here's the excel sheet code.

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.lang.Double;
import java.lang.String;
import java.util.*;

import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFCell;
import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFRow;
import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFSheet;
import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFWorkbook;

public class SimpleSpreadsheetTest{

    public static String[] serialOutput = {"1","M","43423",
"2","B","50608", "3","M","53478", "4","B","55853"};
    public static Double myDoubleObject = null;
    public static String myStringObject;

    public static Double getTheString(Double someDouble, String
someString){
        return someDouble.valueOf(someString);
    }

    public static double getTheDouble(int i){
        if (serialOutput.length != 0){
            ArrayList tempList = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(serialOutput));
            String myStringObject = (String) tempList.get(i);
            myDoubleObject = getTheString(myDoubleObject, myStringObject);
            //return myDoubleObject.doubleValue();
        }
        return myDoubleObject.doubleValue();
    }
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException{
          HSSFWorkbook wb = new HSSFWorkbook();
          HSSFSheet sheet = wb.createSheet("sheetAttemptOne...Work!");
          HSSFRow row ;

          if (serialOutput.length % 3 != 0){
              System.out.println("Insufficient Data!");
          }
          else
          {
              row = sheet.createRow(0);
              HSSFCell hssfCell = row.createCell((short)0);
              hssfCell.setCellValue("Event Number");
              hssfCell = row.createCell((short)1);
              hssfCell.setCellValue("Event Type");
              hssfCell = row.createCell((short)2);
              hssfCell.setCellValue("Time");

                  for (int i=0; i<(serialOutput.length) ; i = i + 3){
                      row = sheet.createRow(1 + (i/3));

                      hssfCell = row.createCell((short)0);
                      hssfCell.setCellValue(getTheDouble(i));
                      hssfCell = row.createCell((short)1);
                      hssfCell.setCellValue(serialOutput[i+1]);
                      hssfCell = row.createCell((short)2);
                      hssfCell.setCellValue(getTheDouble(i+2));
                  }
                  FileOutputStream fileOut = new
FileOutputStream("workbookAttempt6.xls");
                    wb.write(fileOut);
                    fileOut.close();
              }
          }
}

Which works just fine. But where am I supposed to insert code that
actually imports this serialOutput once I run serialDemo? I am not
sure if I'm being very clear with my request but feel free to pump any
questions about the code or about what I want to do and, more
importantly, answer as well as you can :)

thanks;

julie