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Asked: 2026-05-21T05:01:26+00:00

I need to use popen in a project, but I get: error: ‘popen’ was

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I need to use popen in a project, but I get:

error: 'popen' was not declared in this scope

It looks like GCC defines __STRICT_ANSI__ under both -std=c++0x and (contrary to what little information I was able to find) -std=gnu++0x, which causes popen (and _popen) to be elided from stdio. Oddly enough, undefining __STRICT_ANSI__ doesn’t solve the issue, nor does forward-declaring the function. I’m obviously missing something. Is there a reasonable workaround?

I was using MinGW with 4.5.0, and upgraded to 4.5.2, but am still experiencing the same problem. I’d rather not have to muck about with msys to compile 4.6.0, but I will if I must.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’m simply undefining it on the commandline right away, this is not terribly “clean” but it works fine from what I can tell.

    -std=gnu++0x -U__STRICT_ANSI__

    There is probably a good reason why one should not do that, but it gives me what I want (C++0x plus GNU extensions, plus legacy stuff still works). I’ve been doing this for a long time and never run into trouble. But don’t blame me if it eats your cat.

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