C++ system() function — How to collect the output of the issued command?

Question

I\'m running some commands with the C++ system() function:

int system ( const char * command );

How can I collect the standard

Answer 1

Inspired by bmorin's attempt, but working and tested, this snippet will take a char* command and return a char* containing the results of executing that command...

// Calling function must free the returned result.
char* exec(const char* command) {
  FILE* fp;
  char* line = NULL;
  // Following initialization is equivalent to char* result = ""; and just
  // initializes result to an empty string, only it works with
  // -Werror=write-strings and is so much less clear.
  char* result = (char*) calloc(1, 1);
  size_t len = 0;

  fflush(NULL);
  fp = popen(command, "r");
  if (fp == NULL) {
    printf("Cannot execute command:\n%s\n", command);
    return NULL;
  }

  while(getline(&line, &len, fp) != -1) {
    // +1 below to allow room for null terminator.
    result = (char*) realloc(result, strlen(result) + strlen(line) + 1);
    // +1 below so we copy the final null terminator.
    strncpy(result + strlen(result), line, strlen(line) + 1);
    free(line);
    line = NULL;
  }

  fflush(fp);
  if (pclose(fp) != 0) {
    perror("Cannot close stream.\n");
  }
  return result;
}

I looked into just editing bmorin's code, but would have had to change most lines, so a separate answer seemed more appropriate. Apologies if not. (Amongst other problems, bmorin's code didn't actually accumulate the lines; it printed them to stdout, where I presume they would not be wanted, since system() would have done that; and it returned void in one error path, when the function must return a char*, so the code wouldn't compile. Perhaps most egregious, it freed the result just before returning it.)