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

//execute external process and read exactly binary or text output
//can read image from Zip file for example
string run(const char* cmd){
    FILE* pipe = popen(cmd, "r");
    if (!pipe) return "ERROR";
    char buffer[262144];
    string data;
    string result;
    int dist=0;
    int size;
    //TIME_START
    while(!feof(pipe)) {
        size=(int)fread(buffer,1,262144, pipe); //cout<<buffer<<" size="<<size<<endl;
        data.resize(data.size()+size);
        memcpy(&data[dist],buffer,size);
        dist+=size;
    }
    //TIME_PRINT_
    pclose(pipe);
    return data;
}

Answer 2

You can use system() as in:

system("ls song > song.txt");

where ls is the command name for listing the contents of the folder song and song is a folder in the current directory. Resulting file song.txt will be created in the current directory.