Thread: Sending simulated keyboard input into a running system() application

Hey,

C noob here. I'm trying to simulate a ctrl+ keypress into a running application.

Quick example:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void) {
  system("/usr/local/bin/rundb");
}

My problem is that the rundb program needs the user to type ctrl-b then s to actually start executing. What is the best way to handle this automatically? Some sort of fork/pipe?

Thanks!

It's part of a larger menu interface that I'm writing. The above code isn't the entire source, just an example of what I'm trying to do (in this case the the rundb system() call is executed when a user hits 'c' from my menu). I'd like to make all the keyboard input as simple as possible.

There is no built-in way to do this in C (ie its not in the standard). However on POSIX systems you can use popen() or manually fork() and execv() then pipe input/output to/from the sub process (would be one way).