How can I run system commands in C/C++ using `execl()`, passing the function arguments only as a command line, not as an executable file?

Question

I would like to execute this command in a C/C++ program: stat -c "%F %A %n" *filename goes here* The filename is stored in the main function's argv[1].

I tried it as execl("/bin/stat", "stat", "-c", "\"%F %A %n\"", "file", NULL);

How should the execl() command look like to achieve the result?

Answer 1

Your command should look like this:

int res = execl("/bin/stat", "stat", "-c", "\"%F %A %n\"", argv[1], NULL);
if (res == -1) {
   perror("/bin/stat");
   exit(1);
}

Then the perror would show you:

/bin/stat: No such file or directory

and you would realize that stat is in /usr/bin or that using execlp would have been a good idea.