.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991 The Regents of the University of California.
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.\" the American National Standards Committee X3, on Information
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.\"     $OpenBSD: system.3,v 1.9 2003/06/02 20:18:38 millert Exp $
.\"
.Dd June 29, 1991
.Dt SYSTEM 3
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm system
.Nd pass a command to the shell
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Fd #include <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
.Dv NULL ,
.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.