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From: leo@ehviea.ine.philips.nl (Leo de Wit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: popen() can't tell if cmd fails
Summary: pclose()
Keywords: popen()
Message-ID: <821@ehviea.ine.philips.nl>
Date: 2 Jul 90 08:28:38 GMT
References: <855@cmsfl>
Reply-To: leo@ehviea.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Organization: Philips I&E Eindhoven
Lines: 19

In article <855@cmsfl> nigel@cmsfl@labtam.oz (Nigel Harwood) writes:
|As a general question, how much use to people make of the popen()
|function in programs where failures must be detected ?
|
|I am working on a program where I would like to use
|popen() but can see no way of detecting when the command exits
|with a bad status.
|
|At least not easily anyway.

From the popen() manual page:

     A stream opened by popen should be closed by pclose, which
     waits for the associated process to terminate and returns
     the exit status of the command.
 
I guess this says it all ...

    Leo.