popen

popen, pclose - process I/O

#include <stdio.h> I FILE *popen(const char * command , const char * type ); I int pclose(FILE * stream );

The R popen () function opens a process by creating a pipe, forking, and invoking the shell. Since a pipe is by definition unidirectional, the type argument may specify only reading or writing, not both; the resulting stream is correspondingly read-only or write-only.

The command argument is a pointer to a null-terminated string containing a shell command line. This command is passed to /bin/sh using the -c flag; interpretation, if any, is performed by the shell. The type argument is a pointer to a null-terminated string which must be either "r" for reading or "w" for writing.

The return value from R popen () is a normal standard I/O stream in all respects save that it must be closed with R pclose () rather than fclose(3). Writing to such a stream writes to the standard input of the command; the command's standard output is the same as that of the process that called R popen (), unless this is altered by the command itself. Conversely, reading from a ``popened'' stream reads the command's standard output, and the command's standard input is the same as that of the process that called R popen ().

Note that output R popen () streams are fully buffered by default.

The R pclose () function waits for the associated process to terminate and returns the exit status of the command as returned by wait4(2).

The R popen () function returns NULL if the fork(2) or pipe(2) calls fail, or if it cannot allocate memory.

The R pclose () function returns -1 if wait4(2) returns an error, or some other error is detected.

The R popen () function does not set errno if memory allocation fails. If the underlying fork(2) or pipe(2) fails, errno is set appropriately. If the type argument is invalid, and this condition is detected, errno is set to R EINVAL .

If R pclose () cannot obtain the child status, errno is set to R ECHILD .

POSIX.1-2001.

Since the standard input of a command opened for reading shares its seek offset with the process that called R popen (), if the original process has done a buffered read, the command's input position may not be as expected. Similarly, the output from a command opened for writing may become intermingled with that of the original process. The latter can be avoided by calling fflush(3) before R popen ().

Failure to execute the shell is indistinguishable from the shell's failure to execute command, or an immediate exit of the command. The only hint is an exit status of 127.

sh(1), fork(2), pipe(2), wait4(2), fclose(3), fflush(3), fopen(3), stdio(3), system(3)