:P Perhaps I should research more before I post. Anyway, here's where I'm at. I figured out what an Assertion failure is, but the _popen example (THE EXAMPLE!!) in MSVS 6 generates an error itself. Which makes me wonder.....
Anyway, I've stepped through and as far as I can tell, there is no way for this code to not generate an error. It tries to use a variable in fgets.c (FILE *str) in a check (_ASSERTE(str != null)) without ever initialising str to anything. That's what I understand from the code, anyway.
Is there any other way for me to get what "java -version" returns at command line in my program?