Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!know!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!nuug!nososl!olav
From: olav@nososl.UUCP (Olav Eide)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: System() function
Message-ID: <81@nososl.UUCP>
Date: 23 Oct 90 17:48:59 GMT
References: <24826@adm.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: olav@nososl.UUCP (Jan-Olav Eide)
Organization: Nordic Offshore Systems A/S - Drilling Information Services
Lines: 14

In article <24826@adm.BRL.MIL> vilva@csvax.csc.lsu.edu (Vilva Natarajan) writes:
>
>I am trying to do system("man cat | wc -c") in my program, and i need
>to store the value returned by "wc" in a variable declared in my program.
>I dont want to redirect it to a file and then read from the file.
>Please advice.
>
Why not use the popen call ?

		 fd = popen("man cat | wc -c","r");
		 fgets(line,LL,fd);
		 sscanf(line,"%d",&your_variable);

You should of course check the return values for popen and fgets