system() function call LINUX

system

function

int system ( const char * command );

Execute system command
Invokes the command processor to execute a command. Once the command execution has terminated, the processor gives the control back to the program, returning an int value, whose interpretation is system-dependent.

The function can also be used with NULL as argument to check whether a command processor exists.

Parameters

command

C string containing the system command to be executed.

Return Value

The value returned when the argument passed is not NULL, depends on the running environment specifications. In many systems, 0 is used to indicate that the command was successfully executed and other values to indicate some sort of error.
When the argument passed is NULL, the function returns a nonzero value if the command processor is available, and zero otherwise.

Portability

The behavior and return value are platform-dependent.

Example

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/* system example : DIR */ #include #include int main () { int i; printf ("Checking if processor is available..."); if (system(NULL)) puts ("Ok"); else exit (1); printf ("Executing command DIR...\n"); i=system ("dir"); printf ("The value returned was: %d.\n",i); return 0; }