How can I run an external program from C and parse its output?

Question

I\'ve got a utility that outputs a list of files required by a game. How can I run that utility within a C program and grab its output so I can act on it within the same pr

Answer 1

Well, assuming you're on a command line in a windows environment, you can use pipes or command line redirects. For instance,

commandThatOutputs.exe > someFileToStoreResults.txt

or

commandThatOutputs.exe | yourProgramToProcessInput.exe

Within your program, you could use the C standard input functions to read the other programs output (scanf, etc.): http://irc.essex.ac.uk/www.iota-six.co.uk/c/c1_standard_input_and_output.asp . You could also use the file example and use fscanf. This should also work in Unix/Linux.

This is a very generic question, you may want to include more details, like what type of output it is (just text, or a binary file?) and how you want to process it.

Edit: Hooray clarification!

Redirecting STDOUT looks to be troublesome, I've had to do it in .NET, and it gave me all sorts of headaches. It looks like the proper C way is to spawn a child process, get a file pointer, and all of a sudden my head hurts.

So heres a hack that uses temporary files. It's simple, but it should work. This will work well if speed isn't an issue (hitting the disk is slow), or if it's throw-away. If you're building an enterprise program, looking into the STDOUT redirection is probably best, using what other people recommended.

#include 
#include 

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    FILE * fptr;                    // file holder
    char c;                         // char buffer


    system("dir >> temp.txt");      // call dir and put it's contents in a temp using redirects.
    fptr = fopen("temp.txt", "r");  // open said file for reading.
                                    // oh, and check for fptr being NULL.
    while(1){
        c = fgetc(fptr);
        if(c!= EOF)
            printf("%c", c);        // do what you need to.
        else
            break;                  // exit when you hit the end of the file.
    }
    fclose(fptr);                   // don't call this is fptr is NULL.  
    remove("temp.txt");             // clean up

    getchar();                      // stop so I can see if it worked.
}

Make sure to check your file permissions: right now this will simply throw the file in the same directory as an exe. You might want to look into using /tmp in nix, or C:\Users\username\Local Settings\Temp in Vista, or C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp in 2K/XP. I think the /tmp will work in OSX, but I've never used one.