Capture the output from an exe

[sketchymandan]

im writing a small editor for RSL coding, and ive got an external program "3Delight" to compile the code.

Now i want the output from that exe to be captured in a string once the compilation is comlete, but all of the methods ive found online dont seem to work for me. Ive tried using _popen which works if i run a normal command like "dir", but not with the exe.

This is the function ive been using that works with the normal commands

std::string exec(const char* cmd) 
{
    FILE* pipe = _popen(cmd, "r");
    if (!pipe) return "ERROR";
    char buffer[128];
    std::string result = "";
    while(!feof(pipe)) {
    	if(fgets(buffer, 128, pipe) != NULL)
    		result += buffer;
    }
    _pclose(pipe);
    return result;
}

and this is how i was calling it, but it just returned an empty string, even though the exe printed "Compilation successful"

exec("\"\"%DELIGHT%/bin/shaderdl\" \"E:/RenderManShaders/TestArea/Source/basicDiffuse.sl\"")

any help?
cheers

[ypfz3TCk]

I would say that the problem is in line 8. That condition is never satisfied so nothing is ever passed to the string result.

[sketchymandan]

do you mean that only when the command shown is used, or when any command is used?

i only ask because all of windows normal shell commands return results, its only when i run the exe that the output is empty

maybe im just using it wrong, im new to this kinda stuff and though it would be a little different

[naraku9333]

Do you just want to redirect stdout?

#include <cstdio>
int main()
{
    std::freopen("myfile.txt", "w", stdout);
    std::system("help");
}