POPEN(3)						     Linux Programmer's Manual							  POPEN(3)

NAME

       popen, pclose - process I/O

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdio.h>

       FILE *popen(const char *command, const char *type);

       int pclose(FILE *stream);

DESCRIPTION

       The  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 mode argument is a pointer to a null-terminated string which must be
       either `r' for reading or `w' for writing.

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

       Note that output popen streams are fully buffered by default.

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

RETURN VALUE

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

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

ERRORS

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

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

CONFORMING TO

       POSIX.2

BUGS

       Since the standard input of a command opened for reading shares its seek offset with the process  that  called  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 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.

HISTORY

       A popen() and a pclose() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

SEE ALSO

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

BSD MANPAGE
							    1998-05-07								  POPEN(3)