Specifically I'm trying to run xmacro from within a c program. If I were to run it from the terminal I would do it along the lines of , but I want to run it from my c program. I'm fine with my c program running it from the terminal if that's possible and easier but I'm guessing there must be a better way. How would I go about doing this? Thanks!

You have a few options with this one. The simplest is to use the system() function which as you said calls a shell script from in C. The others involve using the fork and exec families of calls and it all depends on what kind of communication you need as well as your performance needs.

Regards,

Alunduil

Great! Yeah the system() function will work. Thanks.

I realize that the OP has solved their problem, but I just wanted to point something out to other people who may be reading this thread.

Using the system() function is really only good practice if you don't intend for your program to be cross-platform. Since system() essentially just passes a string to the system shell for it to parse, then a program that has bash commands in a system() call will only work on systems that use bash as the main shell. The most obvious problem with this is that, well, not all systems use bash as their main command shell (especially not Windows), and so you'll get errors if you try to run the same program with the same system() calls on a system with a different CLI shell.

I'm not trying to criticize the OP's use of the function...if it's for something private, then that's fine. I was just pointing out that you really shouldn't use the function in all cases.