On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 17:21 -0700, Greg Frinchaboy wrote: > This may be an old issue but I could not find info in the archives. > > u_int num_cpus = system("cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -c processor > > /dev/null"); > > Has yielded the number of cpus on the system since I used it in RH7.3 > and fc3. > Now in fc5, all uses of system("cmd"); return -1 > > The command executes OK, just the return value is always -1. > > u_int num_cpus = system("cat /proc/cpuinfo"); > dumps the cpuinfo file to the system console > > u_int num_cpus = system("cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -c processor"); > dumps a 2 to the system console, etc. > > Any help would be appreciated... > Greg your line of code suggests you expect system() to return you an integer parsed from the console output of your command. This isn't what system does: man system "The value returned is -1 on error (e.g. fork() failed), and the return status of the command otherwise." "grep -c" puts the count of the matches found on stdout, and returns a status of zero if something is found and 1 otherwise (and 2 on error). So I'd expect your "num_cpus" to be zero, typically, and 1 if no 'processor' string was found in /proc/cpuinfo. Indeed, that's exactly what happened when I tried it just now. By the way, at the command line you can use "echo $?" to show the exit status of the last executed command. Hope that helps. Matt Davey I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played mcdavey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx for SEVEN hours. Great song. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list