Launching an application within program runtime

Hi, I am currently doing a program where I am receiving data via sockets and writing this data on a file (this is a video file). Now I need a mechanism so that when a certain number of packets have been received I launch a program automatically opening the file.
I've already tried opening the file manually and after a certain amount of time video playback starts.

The problem of course is not keeping track of the packets received but launching a program while execution of the program continues. Any suggestions and what concepts in particular do I need to learn? My current knowledge of C++ is standard (up to processing files, pointers etc. and basic usage of sockets)

I'm programing in C++, using Linux OpenSuse 10.3.

thanks in advance
dav_mt

fork() & exec() [exec comes in a number of flavours].

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Mats

Oki, i'm assuming that i need to learn some theory about threads.

so basically it will boil down about having a thread receiving data on sockets, and a thread that will launch the video player right?

No, fork() will create another instance of your application, exec() will run another program. You can't use threads if you want to run another program - you need to create a new process.

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Mats

i managed to use the fork() function and till here we're good (thanks, looked at a quick tutorial and really saved me some time :) )

i'm having some trouble using the exec() function

Code:

---

if (packetsrcvd == 850)
        {
        pid_t pID = vfork();
              if (pID == 0)
              {       
                long counter = 0;
                cout << "\nProcess created succesfully..." << endl;
                execl("/bin/sh", "-r", "-t", "-l", "video_in.3gp", (char *) 0);
              }
        }

---

Finally i need to launch a video player to launch that 3gp file. So of course my code is currently incorrect since /bin/sh is expecting to execute an executable. So my next query is how will I be able to pass that video filename to an application.

thanks

Well, instead of /bin/sh, use whatever your video player is. And of course, you probably wouldn't pass -r etc to your player.

thanks for your help managed to make it work :)
for future reference this is how it worked

Code:

---

execl("/*PATH TO VIDEO PLAYER*/", "-o", "/*VIDEO FILE*/", (char *) 0);

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where -o refers to opening the file