C++ popen command without console

Question

when I use popen to get the output of a command, say dir, it will prompt out a console.

however, can I get the output of a command without the appearance of the cons

Answer 1

I needed to solve this for my full screen OpenGL Windows application, but was unable to prevent the console window popping up. Instead, taking back focus after a short delay seems to work well enough to avoid seeing it.

_popen(cmd, "wb");

Sleep(100);

ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_SHOWDEFAULT);
SetForegroundWindow(hWnd);

Update: this apparently doesn't work if the program is launched from Explorer. It is working when launched from Visual Studio.