Thread: allowing pipes with execution in C

  1. #1
    Registered User
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    Angry allowing pipes with execution in C

    i'm having a heck of a time trying to figure out if i can execute a program, say using execl or similar and using a pipe with that.
    ex. i want to print the file size of /home/foo/foo.txt by running
    ls -al /home/foo/foo.txt|gawk '{print $5}'

    how would i go about doing this? is it even possible? (duh, of course it is... somehow).

  2. #2
    The Artful Lurker Deckard's Avatar
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    Keeping mind that pipes and redirects are a function of the shell, here are a couple of things to try:

    1) Use system() to execute the command.
    2) If you must use execl(), exec the shell (/bin/bash, /bin/ksh, etc) and pass your command as the sole argument.
    3) Put you command in a shell script which you can call from execl().
    Jason Deckard

  3. #3
    and the hat of int overfl Salem's Avatar
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    There are far more efficient ways of getting the file size.

    But for pipes, you need to look up the pipe system call, and arrange for a pipe to exist between two child processes.

  4. #4
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    There are far more efficient ways of getting the file size.
    Code:
    unsigned long sizeoffile(FILE *file)
    {
      fseek(file,0,SEEK_END);
      return(ftell(file));
    }
    klausi
    When I close my eyes nobody can see me...

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