[c] How to execute a shell script from C in Linux?

How can I execute a shell script from C in Linux?

A simple way is.....

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>


#define SHELLSCRIPT "\
#/bin/bash \n\
echo \"hello\" \n\
echo \"how are you\" \n\
echo \"today\" \n\
"
/*Also you can write using char array without using MACRO*/
/*You can do split it with many strings finally concatenate 
  and send to the system(concatenated_string); */

int main()
{
    puts("Will execute sh with the following script :");
    puts(SHELLSCRIPT);
    puts("Starting now:");
    system(SHELLSCRIPT);    //it will run the script inside the c code. 
    return 0;
}

Say thanks to
Yoda @http://www.unix.com/programming/216190-putting-bash-script-c-program.html

If you need more fine-grade control, you can also go the fork pipe exec route. This will allow your application to retrieve the data outputted from the shell script.

You can use system:

system("/usr/local/bin/foo.sh");

This will block while executing it using sh -c, then return the status code.

If you're ok with POSIX, you can also use popen()/pclose()

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void) {
/* ls -al | grep '^d' */
  FILE *pp;
  pp = popen("ls -al", "r");
  if (pp != NULL) {
    while (1) {
      char *line;
      char buf[1000];
      line = fgets(buf, sizeof buf, pp);
      if (line == NULL) break;
      if (line[0] == 'd') printf("%s", line); /* line includes '\n' */
    }
    pclose(pp);
  }
  return 0;
}

I prefer fork + execlp for "more fine-grade" control as doron mentioned. Example code shown below.

Store you command in a char array parameters, and malloc space for the result.

int fd[2];
pipe(fd);
if ( (childpid = fork() ) == -1){
   fprintf(stderr, "FORK failed");
   return 1;
} else if( childpid == 0) {
   close(1);
   dup2(fd[1], 1);
   close(fd[0]);
   execlp("/bin/sh","/bin/sh","-c",parameters,NULL);
}
wait(NULL);
read(fd[0], result, RESULT_SIZE);
printf("%s\n",result);