CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cwindowsconsole
Raven
Raven

Reputation: 2257

How to save text from console to a string in C (Windows platform)

I'm currently building a console app for a school project and I really need this function for my app.

How do I save all the text from console to a string in C (Windows platform)?

For example:

If I used the function system("dir"), it will output to console and list all the subdirectories and files in a directory. And I want it to be saved on a string for later use.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 246

Answers (2)

Jeegar Patel
Jeegar Patel

Reputation: 27240

Use popen() function:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009604499/functions/popen.html

The popen() function shall execute the command specified by the string command. It shall create a pipe between the calling program and the executed command, and shall return a pointer to a stream that can be used to either read from or write to the pipe.

#include ...

FILE *fp;
int status;
char path[PATH_MAX];


fp = popen("ls *", "r");
if (fp == NULL)
    /* Handle error */;


while (fgets(path, PATH_MAX, fp) != NULL
    printf("%s", path);

This works on Linux. So i think it might also works in windows.

Upvotes: 1

johnsyweb
johnsyweb

Reputation: 141948

You could use popen() rather than system():

#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>

int main()
{
    FILE *fp;
    char path[PATH_MAX];

    fp = popen("DIR", "r");
    if (fp == NULL)
    {
        /* Handle error */
    }

    while (fgets(path, PATH_MAX, fp) != NULL)
    {
        printf("%s", path);
    }

    pclose(fp);
    return 0;
}

Upvotes: 1

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