windows/ofSystem()

s_e_p · April 9, 2023, 3:56pm

This is a tangent of my other topic here.

How does ofSystem() work on Windows? It seems it’s supposed to execute commands as they would be done in the command prompt, but eg. ofSystem(“ipConfig”) seemingly does nothing…

TimChi · April 10, 2023, 12:48am

Hey @s_e_p maybe have a look at ofUtils.cpp for the details, but windows looks pretty similar to the others. In my macOS nightly its on lines 1046 thru 1073. It looks to me like ofSystem() uses calls (or maybe macros ?) from the c std lib.

theo · April 10, 2023, 3:17pm

echoing @timchi - and there is some quite clear info in the .h
TLDR: it gives the output as a string instead of printing to the console.

github.com

openframeworks/openFrameworks/blob/master/libs/openFrameworks/utils/ofUtils.h#L1048-L1056

      
        
            /// \brief Executes a system command. Similar to run a command in terminal.
            ///
            /// \note Will block until the executed program/command has finished.
            /// \returns the system command output as string.
            ///
            /// \note ofSystem() grabs only stdout; if you are interested in stderr
            ///(which may be the case if you're getting "empty" results) consider
            /// redirection by appending 2>&1|cat to your command.
            std::string ofSystem(const std::string& command);

s_e_p · April 11, 2023, 9:09am

Ahh, I see. Thank you!