Question

I am trying to create a new process (which shouldn’t block the current program) in C++, and to have the C++ listen for a message. When the message arrives, I want to run some more code.

I have this method which executes the command and results the result immediately, but I have no idea how to make one that runs code when the process returns a message:

    string exec(const char* cmd)
    {
        // popen for *nix
        FILE* pipe = _popen(cmd, "r");

        if (!pipe)
            return "";

        char buffer[128];
        string result = "";

        while(!feof(pipe)) {
            if(fgets(buffer, 128, pipe) != NULL)
                result += buffer;
        }

        // pclose for *nix
        _pclose(pipe);

        return result;
    }

Note: it may take a 1-3 seconds until the process returns the message — and the process will continue execution after that so the above code is not sufficient as the executed program will never end.

Answer 1

You could put the code which executes the process in a separate thread, that way the primary thread can continue to execute while the secondary thread starts the process and waits for the message from the child process.