In C how do you redirect stdin/stdout/stderr to files when making an execvp() or similar call?

Question

I have the following code:

pid_t pid = fork();
if (pid == -1)
{
    // ...
}
else if (pid == 0)
{
    stdin = someopenfile;
    stdout = someotherfile;
    stderr = somethirdopenfile;
    execvp(args[0], args);
    // handle error ...
}
else
{
    // ...
}

The problem is, the input/output of the execvp() call is still the console, rather than the files. Clearly I am doing something wrong, what is the right way to do this?

Answer 1

The right way to do it is to replace the file descriptors STDIN_FILENO, STDOUT_FILENO and STDERR_FILENO with the opened files using dup2(). You should also then close the original files in the child process:

else if (pid == 0)
{
    dup2(fileno(someopenfile), STDIN_FILENO);
    dup2(fileno(someotherfile), STDOUT_FILENO);
    dup2(fileno(somethirdopenfile), STDERR_FILENO);
    fclose(someopenfile);
    fclose(someotheropenfile);
    fclose(somethirdopenfile);
    execvp(args[0], args);
    // handle error ...
}