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cgedit

Opening a file externally using C program

I'd like to create a program that causes a running gedit process to open a .txt file in a new tab using C. The file would be the argument I supply to the program. However, I'd like to avoid using system() altogether.

I'm on Linux. Is this possible? If so, by what means?

Solution

  • You don't need system(). You can use fork/execlp

    if(!fork())
    execlp("gedit", "gedit", filename, NULL);

    The version of gedit that's on my laptop uses a new tab by default if there's a running instance already, but I'm not sure about other versions.