Execute program from within a C program
You want to use popen
. It gives you a unidirectional pipe with which you can access stdin and stdout of the program.
popen is standard on modern unix and unix-like OS, of which Linux is one :-)
Type
man popen
in a terminal to read more about it.
EDIT
Whether popen
produces unidirectional or bidirectional pipes depends on the implementation. In Linux and OpenBSD, popen
produces unidirectional pipes, which are read-only or write-only. On OS X, FreeBSD and NetBSD popen
produces bidirectional pipes.
I wrote some example C code for someone else a while back that shows how to do this. Here it is for you:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
void error(char *s);
char *data = "Some input data\n";
main()
{
int in[2], out[2], n, pid;
char buf[255];
/* In a pipe, xx[0] is for reading, xx[1] is for writing */
if (pipe(in) < 0) error("pipe in");
if (pipe(out) < 0) error("pipe out");
if ((pid=fork()) == 0) {
/* This is the child process */
/* Close stdin, stdout, stderr */
close(0);
close(1);
close(2);
/* make our pipes, our new stdin,stdout and stderr */
dup2(in[0],0);
dup2(out[1],1);
dup2(out[1],2);
/* Close the other ends of the pipes that the parent will use, because if
* we leave these open in the child, the child/parent will not get an EOF
* when the parent/child closes their end of the pipe.
*/
close(in[1]);
close(out[0]);
/* Over-write the child process with the hexdump binary */
execl("/usr/bin/hexdump", "hexdump", "-C", (char *)NULL);
error("Could not exec hexdump");
}
printf("Spawned 'hexdump -C' as a child process at pid %d\n", pid);
/* This is the parent process */
/* Close the pipe ends that the child uses to read from / write to so
* the when we close the others, an EOF will be transmitted properly.
*/
close(in[0]);
close(out[1]);
printf("<- %s", data);
/* Write some data to the childs input */
write(in[1], data, strlen(data));
/* Because of the small amount of data, the child may block unless we
* close it's input stream. This sends an EOF to the child on it's
* stdin.
*/
close(in[1]);
/* Read back any output */
n = read(out[0], buf, 250);
buf[n] = 0;
printf("-> %s",buf);
exit(0);
}
void error(char *s)
{
perror(s);
exit(1);
}
- Create two pipes with
pipe(...)
, one forstdin
, one forstdout
. fork(...)
the process.- In the child process (the one where
fork(...)
returns 0)dup (...)
the pipes tostdin
/stdout
. exec[v][e]
the to be started programm file in the child process.- In the parent process (the one where
fork
) returns the PID of the child) do a loop that reads from the child'sstdout
(select(...)
orpoll(...)
,read(...)
) into a buffer, until the child terminates (waitpid(...)
). - Eventually supply the child with input on
stdin
if it expects some. - When done
close(...)
the pipes.