Possible Duplicate:
How can I run an external program from C and parse its output?
I want to run a command in linux and get the text returned of what it outputs, but I do not want this text printed to screen. Is there a more elegant way than making a temporary file?
You want the "popen" function. Here's an example of running the command "ls /etc" and outputing to the console.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
FILE *fp;
char path[1035];
/* Open the command for reading. */
fp = popen("/bin/ls /etc/", "r");
if (fp == NULL) {
printf("Failed to run command\n" );
exit(1);
}
/* Read the output a line at a time - output it. */
while (fgets(path, sizeof(path), fp) != NULL) {
printf("%s", path);
}
/* close */
pclose(fp);
return 0;
}