Execute a terminal command from a Cocoa app

Question

How can I execute a terminal command (like grep) from my Objective-C Cocoa application?

Answer 1

I wrote this "C" function, because NSTask is obnoxious..

NSString * runCommand(NSString* c) {

    NSString* outP; FILE *read_fp;  char buffer[BUFSIZ + 1];
    int chars_read; memset(buffer, '\0', sizeof(buffer));
    read_fp = popen(c.UTF8String, "r");
    if (read_fp != NULL) {
        chars_read = fread(buffer, sizeof(char), BUFSIZ, read_fp);
        if (chars_read > 0) outP = $UTF8(buffer);
        pclose(read_fp);
    }   
    return outP;
}

NSLog(@"%@", runCommand(@"ls -la /")); 

total 16751
drwxrwxr-x+ 60 root        wheel     2108 May 24 15:19 .
drwxrwxr-x+ 60 root        wheel     2108 May 24 15:19 ..
…

oh, and for the sake of being complete / unambiguous…

#define $UTF8(A) ((NSString*)[NSS stringWithUTF8String:A])

Years later, C is still a bewildering mess, to me.. and with little faith in my ability to correct my gross shortcomings above - the only olive branch I offer is a rezhuzhed version of @inket's answer that is barest of bones, for my fellow purists / verbosity-haters...

id _system(id cmd) { 
   return !cmd ? nil : ({ NSPipe* pipe; NSTask * task;
  [task = NSTask.new setValuesForKeysWithDictionary: 
    @{ @"launchPath" : @"/bin/sh", 
        @"arguments" : @[@"-c", cmd],
   @"standardOutput" : pipe = NSPipe.pipe}]; [task launch];
  [NSString.alloc initWithData:
     pipe.fileHandleForReading.readDataToEndOfFile
                      encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]; });
}