How do I read the results of a system() call in C++?

Question

I\'m using the following code to try to read the results of a df command in Linux using popen.

#include  // file an         


        

Answer 1

You're making this all too hard. popen(3) returns a regular old FILE * for a standard pipe file, which is to say, newline terminated records. You can read it with very high efficiency by using fgets(3) like so in C:

#include 
char bfr[BUFSIZ] ;
FILE * fp;
// ...
if((fp=popen("/bin/df", "r")) ==NULL) {
   // error processing and return
}
// ...
while(fgets(bfr,BUFSIZ,fp) != NULL){
   // process a line
}

In C++ it's even easier --

#include 
#include 
#include 

FILE * fp ;

if((fp= popen("/bin/df","r")) == NULL) {
    // error processing and exit
}

ifstream ins(fileno(fp)); // ifstream ctor using a file descriptor

string s;
while (! ins.eof()){
    getline(ins,s);
    // do something
}

There's some more error handling there, but that's the idea. The point is that you treat the FILE * from popen just like any FILE *, and read it line by line.