system

raw OCR

Issues a DOS command.

Defined in header <stdlib.h>

Syntax

#include <stdlib.h>
int system(const char "*command);

Portability

DOS	UNIX	Windows	ANSI C	C++ only
■	■		■

Remarks

system invokes the DOS COMMAND.COM	file to execute a DOS

command, batch file, or other program named by the string command, from inside an executing C program.

To be located and executed, the program must be in the current directory or in one of the directories listed in the PATH string in the environment.

The COMSPEC	environment variable is used to find the
COMMAND.COM	file, so that file need not be in the current directory.

Return value

If command is a NULL pointer, then system returns nonzero if a command processor is available. If command is not a NULL pointer, system returns zero if the command processor was successfully started. If an error

occurred, a -1 is returned and errno is set to ENOENT,	ENOMEM,	E2BIG,

or ENOEXEC.

Example

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
   printf("About to spawn command. com and run a DOS command\n");
   system!"dir");
   return 0;

Differences from modern implementations

Nothing recorded yet.

Modern references

These are search links, not yet checked by hand.

Stable link: /3.1/stdlib.h/system/ · short form /3.1/system/