Please Help!!
How can I send information and receive from external command prompt from my program??.
I want to run an external command prompt, a code that's is not mine, to send information to this command prompt, then make my program hit enter at
the command prompt and then receive back information from the command prompt.
Thanks in advanced.
You can use system to run external commands.
Man Page for SYSTEM (freebsd Section 3) - The UNIX and Linux Forums
If your aim is to send and receive information interactively from two separate processes, then that will require more care, perhaps by using the exec family of functions and something like fork.
The pro way is to use pipes.
But if you're looking for a simple way, you could direct the output of the called program to a file. (Here I'm assuming you're on windows since you used the term "command prompt".)
Code:#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> int main() { char *name = tmpnam(NULL); if (!name) return EXIT_FAILURE; char command[L_tmpnam + 10] = "dir > "; strcat(command, name); system(command); char line[BUFSIZ]; FILE *f = fopen(name, "r"); while (fgets(line, sizeof line, f)) { if (strstr(line, "<DIR>")) fputs(line, stdout); } fclose(f); remove(name); return 0; }
Last edited by oogabooga; 01-10-2014 at 03:41 PM. Reason: changed TMP_MAX to L_tmpnam
The cost of software maintenance increases with the square of the programmer's creativity. - Robert D. Bliss
@yaron:
This is OS specific. Assuming you're on Linux, pipe-fork-exec is a pretty standard way to communicate with the stdin and stdout of another program. The man page for pipe() has a nice example. If you're on Windows, this link might help.
@oogabooga:
From the man page of tmpnam
IIRC, there's some timing issues/race condition with when it checks if the name is available and when the name is actually created in the file system, leaving the possibility of two things using the same temp file.Originally Posted by man 3 tmpnam
Surely this is system-specific.
tmpfile would not work here.
The cost of software maintenance increases with the square of the programmer's creativity. - Robert D. Bliss
Ahh, I always forget tmpnam is a standard function. But so is tmpfile actually, though you have no control over where you put it. mkstemp is POSIX though.
So yes, that bug is Linux/POSIX only. And yes, tmpfile is not the right thing here, since he can't get the name.
