Re: calling external programs

[Nix <nix go-nix ca>]

On Mon, 2003-10-13 at 11:01, Dave Mason wrote:
> Hi,  I'm a newbie to gtk, and I need to call a system() function and have 
> its output show up in a separate frame(?) or dialog box or window or 
> something.  Do you just create the new widget, make it active, then make the 
> system() call?  What's the recommended widget to use - a window?

In your shoes, I would call popen() instead:

FILE *pfile = popen ("ls -l", "r") ;
char buf[256] = "" ;
int ic = 0 ;

while (!feof (pfile))
  {
  ic = fread (buff, 1, 256, pfile) ;
  /* Now buf contains ic characters of output */
  }

pclose (pfile) ;

See, popen () allows you to treat the input XOR the output of a process
as a file.  This way, you can read from XOR write to it, respectively.

As for the widget to display the text, I'd say a GtkTextView would be a
solution.