From:	abharmal AT hotmail DOT com (Ali Bharmal)
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Capturing stdout using system
Date:	Mon, 09 Feb 1998 21:29:52 GMT
Organization:	Selwyn College, The University of Cambridge
Lines:	28
Message-ID:	<6bnsgl$p2u$1@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host:	quango.sel.cam.ac.uk
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

I'm writing a SSI wrapper for my web server (its called before a piece of HTML 
is delivered, parses it, and runs commands etc.. i.e. dynamic-HTML). One 
requirement is that it will run external programs and capture their output and 
insert it in place of the command in the HTML e.g.

<B>Welcome to <!-- #exec "gethostname" --></B>

turns into:

<B>Welcome to <I>quango.sel.cam.ac.uk</I></B>

where gethostname (an executable) outputs '<I>quango.sel.cam.ac.uk</I>'.

The question is; how do I capture any screen output from these programs? Is 
there an alternative to system() which pipes the output into a buffer, or am I 
going to have to redirect output to a file which I then read. I'd rather the 
former, as I'd like the program to be minimum-impact on the system.

[I know this can be easily done in perl ala "$output=`gethostname`"
 which would run the command and stick it's output into $output, is there a 
 C++/DJGPP 'way' of doing this?]

--
 _ |. |_ |_  _  _  _ _  _ | Selwyn College, Cambridge CB3 9DQ
(_||| |_)| |(_|| `| | |(_|| http://quango.sel.cam.ac.uk/

"Little science leads away from God. Much science leads to God" - Leibnitz


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