Execute external command and wait for it to finish under Linux

Question

Easy question: what is the easiest way to execute an external program (with parameters) from C++ (using g++ and Linux)? Is there an easier way rather than doing fork/exec and waiting? I just need to execute the command and wait for it to finish.

Answer 1

Kind of depends on how much you want to interact with the program.

If not at all, you can easily just use system("....");

If you want some I/O then you can use popen();

And if even that is not enough, you will end up will fork() , exec() , wait() , dup() and other functions from this family.

Answer 2

The system() function:

#include 

int main (void)
{
        system("ls /home");
        return 0;
}

Answer 3

I have learnt to use screen command a lot, especially for long running scripts. It may be bit of an overkill for you, but it should definitely do the job in this case.