How to get the printout from a program?

How do you get the output from a program as a return (or some else way)? Like when calling a program with either exec() or system(), and then get back the printout from that program, not just it's returnvalue.

Like "system("ls")" and get what the result the result of the ls command, not just zero or non zero...

Using unix, but want to know how you do in dos too... ;)

Hi,

If i understand you correctly i think you want to catch everything that a program outputs. For example say you run ls.exe from system(). and it writes on the screen "Hello from program" i think you want your program to get that.

If thats right then you look how its done from a dos prompt:

c:\>copy >> file.txt

This saves what the copy program makes up into c:\file.txt.

So to do this from your program:

system("copy >> file.txt");

that does the same as from the prompt. Then you have the output in the file, so you just need to read the file into a buffer for use by your program, i would then sugest deleteing file.txt, from your program.

Hope that helps.

TNT

I know, but that seemed like a very stupid way of doing it... :)

you might want to look into pipes.
i'm still unclear on what exactly you're trying to do. but if i'm guessing right i think you want to use pipes.

How exactly does it work with pipes? Does it come as an argument to the program then?