Executing commands and getting command results.

Im creating a front end to a few commands I commonly use, am I right this is the correct way to do it ?

Find a way to execute the command from the program, and get the program to listen for the results, load them into a string, which the c++ program can manipulate and read ?

Sample code would be great...

Start the command with the popen() function. You can then read its output from a pipe. This is just like reading from a file.

See: man popen

this thread lists a couple of options.

Easiest one is to (when using the system function) pipe the output to a file:
system ('ls /etc > output');
and then just fopen the output file and read it.

Nother option is the popen function which you would use instead of the system function. And the third option is to create a pipe (which I'm not as familiar with).

Hope it helps:
http://forums.devshed.com/t118479/s.html

jpbarto