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.\" Copyright (c) 1991, 1993
.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
.\" must display the following acknowledgement:
.\" This product includes software developed by the University of
.\" California, Berkeley and its contributors.
.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\" without specific prior written permission.
.\"
.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
.\"
.\" @(#)popen.3 8.2 (Berkeley) 5/3/95
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd May 3, 1995
.Dt POPEN 3
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm popen ,
.Nm pclose
.Nd process
.Tn I/O
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In stdio.h
.Ft FILE *
.Fn popen "const char *command" "const char *type"
.Ft int
.Fn pclose "FILE *stream"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn popen
function
.Dq opens
a process by creating a bidirectional pipe
forking,
and invoking the shell.
Any streams opened by previous
.Fn popen
calls in the parent process are closed in the new child process.
Historically,
.Fn popen
was implemented with a unidirectional pipe;
hence many implementations of
.Fn popen
only allow the
.Fa type
argument to specify reading or writing, not both.
Since
.Fn popen
is now implemented using a bidirectional pipe, the
.Fa type
argument may request a bidirectional data flow.
The
.Fa type
argument is a pointer to a null-terminated string
which must be
.Ql r
for reading,
.Ql w
for writing, or
.Ql r+
for reading and writing.
.Pp
The
.Fa command
argument is a pointer to a null-terminated string
containing a shell command line.
This command is passed to
.Pa /bin/sh
using the
.Fl c
flag; interpretation, if any, is performed by the shell.
.Pp
The return value from
.Fn popen
is a normal standard
.Tn I/O
stream in all respects
save that it must be closed with
.Fn pclose
rather than
.Fn 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
.Fn popen ,
unless this is altered by the command itself.
Conversely, reading from a
.Dq popened
stream reads the command's standard output, and
the command's standard input is the same as that of the process that called
.Fn popen .
.Pp
Note that output
.Fn popen
streams are fully buffered by default.
.Pp
The
.Fn pclose
function waits for the associated process to terminate
and returns the exit status of the command
as returned by
.Fn wait4 .
.Sh RETURN VALUES
The
.Fn popen
function returns
.Dv NULL
if the
.Xr fork 2
or
.Xr pipe 2
calls fail,
or if it cannot allocate memory.
.Pp
The
.Fn pclose
function
returns \-1 if
.Fa stream
is not associated with a
.Dq popened
command, if
.Fa stream
already
.Dq pclosed ,
or if
.Xr wait4
returns an error.
.Sh ERRORS
The
.Fn popen
function does not reliably set
.Va errno .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr sh 1 ,
.Xr fork 2 ,
.Xr pipe 2 ,
.Xr wait4 2 ,
.Xr fclose 3 ,
.Xr fflush 3 ,
.Xr fopen 3 ,
.Xr stdio 3 ,
.Xr system 3
.Sh BUGS
Since the standard input of a command opened for reading
shares its seek offset with the process that called
.Fn 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
.Xr fflush 3
before
.Fn popen .
.Pp
Failure to execute the shell
is indistinguishable from the shell's failure to execute command,
or an immediate exit of the command.
The only hint is an exit status of 127.
.Pp
The
.Fn popen
function
always calls
.Xr sh 1 ,
never calls
.Xr csh 1 .
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Fn popen
and a
.Fn pclose
function appeared in
.At v7 .
.Pp
Bidirectional functionality was added in
.Fx 2.2.6 .
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