NetBSD/lib/libc/stdlib/system.3
agc eb7c1594f1 Move UCB-licensed code from 4-clause to 3-clause licence.
Patches provided by Joel Baker in PR 22280, verified by myself.
2003-08-07 16:42:00 +00:00

107 lines
3.1 KiB
Groff

.\" $NetBSD: system.3,v 1.15 2003/08/07 16:43:45 agc Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1993
.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
.\" the American National Standards Committee X3, on Information
.\" Processing Systems.
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.\" from: @(#)system.3 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
.\"
.Dd June 4, 1993
.Dt SYSTEM 3
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm system
.Nd pass a command to the shell
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libc
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In stdlib.h
.Ft int
.Fn system "const char *string"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn system
function
hands the argument
.Fa string
to the command interpreter
.Xr sh 1 .
The calling process waits for the shell to finish executing the command,
ignoring
.Dv SIGINT
and
.Dv SIGQUIT ,
and blocking
.Dv SIGCHLD .
.Pp
If
.Fa string
is a
.Dv NULL
pointer,
.Fn system
will return non-zero.
Otherwise,
.Fn system
returns the termination status of the shell in the format specified by
.Xr waitpid 2 .
.Sh RETURN VALUES
If a child process cannot be created, or the termination status of
the shell cannot be obtained,
.Fn system
returns -1 and sets
.Va errno
to indicate the error.
If execution of the shell fails,
.Fn system
returns the termination status for a program that terminates with a call of
.Fn exit 127 .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr sh 1 ,
.Xr execve 2 ,
.Xr waitpid 2 ,
.Xr popen 3
.Sh STANDARDS
The
.Fn system
function
conforms to
.St -ansiC
and
.St -p1003.2-92 .
.Sh CAVEATS
Never supply the
.Fn system
function with a command containing any part of an unsanitized user-supplied
string.
Shell meta-characters present will be honored by the
.Xr sh 1
command interpreter.