Thread: Writing a script

I know that C probably isn't the best language to be scripting in but I'm not too familiar with my linux virtual machine so I'm not sure how easy it would be to install python or java or something.

I'm trying to write a script and I need to be able to get the last line of output from the console. Here's what I have so far:

Code:

void main()
{
	char text[200];
	FILE *f1,*f2 ;
	f1 = popen("./program1"
,"w");
	f2 = popen("./program2","w");
	while (fgets(text, 200, f2) != NULL)
    		printf("Output is %s", text);
}

I think I need the two popens because program1 blocks and I want program2 to still execute. This doesn't print anything even though there's output from program1 and 2

Thanks

Here's the tutorial I've been following:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/...ons/popen.html

I know that C probably isn't the best language to be scripting in but I'm not too familiar with my linux virtual machine so I'm not sure how easy it would be to install python or java or something.

it depends on the distro you are using...if you are using ubuntu or fedora or opesuse or mandriva or debian or similar distro its only a matter of having internet access and typing 1 line of command into the terminal...and the distros package manager would automatically fetch the entire thing from the internet(its repositories) and install them (and mostly auto-configure them) for you - all by itself.

I'm trying to write a script and I need to be able to get the last line of output from the console.

could you maybe be more clear , maybe give a simple illustration of what you would want to output to look as or something....

BTW, C is not a "scripting" language. It's a language that requires compiling source code into executable files. There's a difference.

Originally Posted by jcafaro10

Ok, so here's my updates with some more comments to show what I'm trying to do:

Code:

       char text[200];
	FILE *f2 ;
	f2 = popen("./program1","r");//this program takes a little while to produce output, a few seconds
	while(strlen(text)==0)//just sit here until there's something on the output
	{
		text = fread(text,sizeof(char),200,f2);
	}
	printf("Text is %s\n",text);//just print out the output for now to make sure we received any
	pclose(f2);

fread() function reads from a stream and returns the size of the data it reads...why are you assigning that to a character array?