Running an application from within an application

[ToniAz]

Hello everyone!

I want to execute the following sequence of statements:

int main() 
{
// do some work x
// call external.exe with data x
// read output produced by external.exe

return 0;
}

I have two main problems:
(1) It is said that system() is not safe, is there an alternative to run an application from within an application?
(2) The external writes output to a file, I want main() to read this output once external finishes execution. Any ides on how to accompish that?

[kbw]

On Windows, the system call is CreateProcess. The shell provides ShellExecute.

You can use either for a user app as a user environment will have the shell.