Thread: catching output

any ideas?

ok, i wrote a program that copies files. now i need to time the execution of that program using different buffer sizes

Code:

 time prog_name

the thing is that i need to run it several times for each buffer size and provide averages in a report. whad i't like to do is write another program that does that i just use a system call:

Code:

system("time cop");

. the only thing is that i'd like to know if i can catch the output that this provides in a variable.

ya, i know, redirect to a file, read the file, place the values into variables, do calculations. BUT if time command prints to standard out, how can i catch that and place it into a variable while the time program is running????

using SuSE

any ideas????
thanks