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c++linuxprocess

Linux equivalent of Process.Start()

On Windows in C#, I can launch an external program from within my code by calling Process.Start(), which starts the process and returns its ID. This is important because I am not forking my own process, and I might have to kill the process later.

I have looked at exec(), fork() and many other things under Linux in C++ but none of those do quite the same thing. For example, system() blocks while the program runs, and fork() duplicates my whole process just so I can run another task.

Can someone tell me what the equivalent is?

Solution

  • The way to start a new process on Linux is by using fork and exec. This you can wrap in your own System class that holds the PID and provides methods to kill the process etc. An example of such a class is QProcess from the Qt library.

    Note: there's also the posix_spawn() and (Linux specific) clone() functions.