CODEWITHSUNDEEP
clinux
Blackbinary
Blackbinary

Reputation: 3986

Executing external commands

I am attempting to make a program in C which presents a GUI and allows the user to select from a list of applications, which to install on the computer. I can manage the gui, but I've never been taught how to actually issue command line commands. I know with bash its just apt-get install firefox for example, but how do I do such a thing with C? i.e. on click, the program runs 'apt-get install

The other problem is I'm not familiar with the proper name for this interaction, so it is hard to search.

Thanks for the help

Upvotes: 1

Views: 648

Answers (5)

ghostdog74
ghostdog74

Reputation: 342363

If using C is not a must, you can try coding in Python(Perl). You will greatly reduce development time, and you can use GUI modules like tkinter(Python) or Tk(Perl) etc that are easy to use. you will have your GUI up in no time.

Upvotes: -1

mrjoltcola
mrjoltcola

Reputation: 20842

If you use the traditional C standard lib, you can choose from:

  • popen() - Opens a process with stdio IO streams to read/write to the process
  • system() - Executes a process with same IO streams as parent

or:

  • fork() + execl() (or exec variants) which is essentially how system() is implemented.

Try the man pages on all of these.

Also, order "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens

Upvotes: 6

Jerry Coffin
Jerry Coffin

Reputation: 490128

The portable way to do this is with system(). The way that's less portable, but more flexible would be to use fork() followed by exec(). There is also popen, if you need/want to communicate with the child via its stdin or stdout (e.g., if you want to capture its output and display it in a window).

Upvotes: 0

Paul Nathan
Paul Nathan

Reputation: 40309

You are attempting to (1) do command line parsing and (2) perform an installation of software. You should know that apt-get is a significant undertaking.

Upvotes: 0

Dmitry Yudakov
Dmitry Yudakov

Reputation: 15734

You could see how other people do it. Looks like you're trying to create something similar to Synaptic, you may check in their source.

Upvotes: 0

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