popen man page on NetBSD

Man page or keyword search:  
man Server   9087 pages
apropos Keyword Search (all sections)
Output format
NetBSD logo
[printable version]

POPEN(3)		 BSD Library Functions Manual		      POPEN(3)

NAME
     popen, pclose — process I/O

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

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 an IPC connection,
     forking, and invoking the shell.  Historically, popen was implemented
     with a unidirectional pipe; hence many implementations of popen only
     allow the type argument to specify reading or writing, not both.  Since
     popen is now implemented using sockets, the type may request a bidirec‐
     tional data flow.	The type argument is a pointer to a null-terminated
     string which must be ‘r’ for reading, ‘w’ for writing, or ‘r+’ for read‐
     ing and writing.  In addition if the character ‘e’ is present in the type
     string, the file descriptor used internally is set to be closed on
     exec(3).

     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 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, read‐
     ing from a “popened” stream reads the command'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 VALUES
     The popen() function returns NULL if the fork(2), pipe(2), or
     socketpair(2) calls fail, or if it cannot allocate memory.

     The pclose() function returns -1 if stream is not associated with a
     “popened” command, if stream has already been “pclosed”, or if wait4(2)
     returns an error.

ERRORS
     The popen() function does not reliably set errno.

SEE ALSO
     sh(1), fork(2), pipe(2), socketpair(2), wait4(2), fclose(3), fflush(3),
     fopen(3), shquote(3), stdio(3), system(3)

STANDARDS
     The popen() and pclose() functions conform to IEEE Std 1003.2-1992
     (“POSIX.2”).

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

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 fail‐
     ure to execute command, or an immediate exit of the command.  The only
     hint is an exit status of 127.

     The popen() argument always calls sh(1), never calls csh(1).

BSD				 June 24, 2011				   BSD
[top]
                             _         _         _ 
                            | |       | |       | |     
                            | |       | |       | |     
                         __ | | __ __ | | __ __ | | __  
                         \ \| |/ / \ \| |/ / \ \| |/ /  
                          \ \ / /   \ \ / /   \ \ / /   
                           \   /     \   /     \   /    
                            \_/       \_/       \_/ 
More information is available in HTML format for server NetBSD

List of man pages available for NetBSD

Copyright (c) for man pages and the logo by the respective OS vendor.

For those who want to learn more, the polarhome community provides shell access and support.

[legal] [privacy] [GNU] [policy] [cookies] [netiquette] [sponsors] [FAQ]
Tweet
Polarhome, production since 1999.
Member of Polarhome portal.
Based on Fawad Halim's script.
....................................................................
Vote for polarhome
Free Shell Accounts :: the biggest list on the net