Question

Say that I execute some command to run in the terminal within a C++ program. For instance:

int main(){
std::system("./myprog");
return 0;
}

Assume that myprog produces some output that is printed to the console. Can I make use of this output within my C++ program? For example:

int main(){
some_var = std::system("./myprog");

if (some_var == "something")
  // Do something.

return 0;
}

Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks again.

Answer 1

You need to use the popen function:

FILE *fp = popen("./myprog", "r");

char buffer[128];
while (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), fp))
{
    std::cout << "Output from program: " << buffer << '\n';
}

pclose(fp);