NAME

xt_spawnvp() - Fork and exec a new process from an argv-style array

LIBRARY

#include <xtend/proc.h>
-lxtend

SYNOPSIS

// FIXME: Ugly stop-gap for now.  sig_t is not portable, so don't use it.
#if defined(__sun__)
typedef void (*sig_t)(int);
#endif
int     xt_spawnvp(int parent_action, int echo, char *argv[],
char *infile, char *outfile, char *errfile)

ARGUMENTS

parent_action:  P_WAIT or P_NOWAIT
echo:           P_ECHO or P_NOECHO
infile:         File to which stdin of child is redirected or NULL
outfile:        File to which stdout of child is redirected or NULL
errfile:        File to which stderr of child is redirected or NULL

DESCRIPTION

xt_spawnvp() and xt_spawnlp() are wrappers around fork(2) and exec(3) which make it easy to run a child process without an intermediate shell process as is used by system(3). The xt_spawnlp() function spawns a child process using a variable argument list. The 6th argument is passed to argv[0] of the child, the 7th to argv[1], etc.

The xt_spawnvp() function spawns a process using the command contained in an argv[] array constructed by the caller. xt_spawnlp() automatically constructs such an argv[] array and calls xt_spawnvp().

The calling process waits for the child to complete if P_WAIT is passed to parent_action, or continues immediately if P_NOWAIT is passed. If P_ECHO is passed as the echo argument, the command is echoed, the command is echoed to the parent's stdout.

If infile, outfile, or errfile are not NULL, then the corresponding file streams stdin, stdout, or stderr are redirected to the filename provided.

RETURN VALUES