system() General Function system() Pass a command to the shell for execution int system(commandline) char *commandline; system passes commandline to the shell sh, which loads it into memory and executes it. system executes commands exactly as if they had been typed at the COHERENT command level. system may be used by commands such as ed, which can pass commands to the COHERENT shell in addition to processing normal interactive re- quests. ***** Example ***** This example uses system to list the names of all C source files in the parent directory. #include <stdio.h> main() { system("cd .. ; ls *.c > mytemp; cat mytemp"); } ***** See Also ***** exec, fork(), general functions, popen(), wait ***** Diagnostics ***** system returns the exit status of the child process, in the for- mat described in wait: exit status in the high byte, signal in- formation in the low byte. Zero normally means success, whereas nonzero normally means failure. This, however, depends on the command. If the shell is not executable, system returns a special code of octal 0177. COHERENT Lexicon Page 1