strcmp() only returns 0 when the two strings are exactly the same.
Use strstr() for your purpose.
Or do I understand your purpose wrong? Is searching for a substring in the output not what you want to do?

umm no, u got me right.
ok again - im passing a string to this function, and i want to check if that string is in the output of the system cmd we just executed.
now, i know what that string im passing is, so, i make another string with {char *temp = "mystring";}, and if i use it in the code block u wrote (and frankly, in all that we started off with), it works fine.

now since i know that temp is supposed to be whats passed to this function, i use strcmp() to check if thats what is being passed to it by comparing it to the string i pass to the function. and sure enough, it doesnt return a 0, and the code block fails. although when i print them both out, they "look" the same.

thats whats bothering me.

could it have to do with a terminating character or something?

ok, got it. the problem was i needed some coffee, and now its working.
the string being passed had an empty char at the start, which is why strcmp() and strlen() were giving me no matches, even though both variables output the same string.


thanks a million billion , esp Hko.