popen() – execute shell command from C/C++

Copied from http://www.sw-at.com/blog/2011/03/23/popen-execute-shell-command-from-cc/

March 23rd, 2011 by Atul Sharma

The popen() function executes a command and pipes the executes command to the calling program, returning a pointer to the stream which can be used by calling program to read/write to the pipe.
Below are the C/C++ snippets to run a simple command, read the stream from pipe and then write to console.
C Implementation

01

#include

02

03	int main(void) {

04

FILE *in;

05	extern FILE *popen();

06	char buff[512];

07

08	if(!(in = popen("ls -sail", "r"))){

09

exit(1);

10

}

11

12	while(fgets(buff, sizeof(buff), in)!=NULL){

13	printf("%s", buff);

14

}

15	pclose(in);

16

17

}

C++ Implementation

01

#include

02

#include

03

04	using namespace std;

05

06	int main() {

07

FILE *in;

08	char buff[512];

09

10	if(!(in = popen("ls -sail", "r"))){

11

return 1;

12

}

13

14	while(fgets(buff, sizeof(buff), in)!=NULL){

15	cout << buff;

16

}

17	pclose(in);

18

19

return 0;

20

}