How do I get the output of a sub process and assign it to a variable. EG: assign the output of wmic csproduct get uuid returns a long string of characters in CMD, how would I run that command in C++ and assign it to a variable?
There are two main options for capturing the output of a process:
Pipes are not supported by the standard library, other than hidden behind the common stream abstraction. Effectively that means that a process A that creates a process B, can't communicate with B via pipes, unless platform-specific functionality for that is used. In Windows the scripting support, Windows Script Host, has direct functionality for the pipe approach, based on polling for output from B. At a much lower level you can use the CreateProcess API function. But it's not trivial to do.
With a temporary file as communication channel, and using only standard C++ functionality, you simply invoke program B via a command interpreter that can redirect B's output. This command interpreter and its syntax then constitutes the platform specific part. So even this approach is platform specific, but the C++ code as such is portable.
In Windows the standard command intepreter is cmd.exe, and it uses the ordinary Unix > syntax in order to redirect output of a program, so the command to be executed can be like
cmd /c "b.exe >tempfile"
You can execute such a command via C++ system. The system function already executes the specified command via a command intepreter, which in Windows is cmd.exe. And so the argument to system only needs to be
b.exe > tempfile
where tempfile is the name or full path to the file where you want the result.
You can create a fresh temporary filename via the tmpnam function.