How can I implement 'tee' programmatically in C?

Question

I'm looking for a way in C to programmatically (ie, not using redirection from the command line) implement 'tee' functionality such that my stdout goes to both stdout and a log file. This needs to work for both my code and all linked libraries that output to stdout. Any way to do this?

Answer 1

You could popen() the tee program.

Or you can fork() and pipe stdout through a child process such as this (adapted from a real live program I wrote, so it works!):

void tee(const char* fname) {
    int pipe_fd[2];
    check(pipe(pipe_fd));
    const pid_t pid = fork();
    check(pid);
    if(!pid) { // our log child
        close(pipe_fd[1]); // Close unused write end
        FILE* logFile = fname? fopen(fname,"a"): NULL;
        if(fname && !logFile)
            fprintf(stderr,"cannot open log file \"%s\": %d (%s)\n",fname,errno,strerror(errno));
        char ch;
        while(read(pipe_fd[0],&ch,1) > 0) {
            //### any timestamp logic or whatever here
            putchar(ch);
            if(logFile)
                fputc(ch,logFile);
            if('\n'==ch) {
                fflush(stdout);
                if(logFile)
                    fflush(logFile);
            }
        }
        putchar('\n');
        close(pipe_fd[0]);
        if(logFile)
            fclose(logFile);
        exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
    } else {
        close(pipe_fd[0]); // Close unused read end
        // redirect stdout and stderr
        dup2(pipe_fd[1],STDOUT_FILENO);  
        dup2(pipe_fd[1],STDERR_FILENO);  
        close(pipe_fd[1]);  
    }
}

Answer 2

The "popen() tee" answers were correct. Here is an example program that does exactly that:

#include "stdio.h"
#include "unistd.h"

int main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
    printf("pre-tee\n");

    if(dup2(fileno(popen("tee out.txt", "w")), STDOUT_FILENO) < 0) {
        fprintf(stderr, "couldn't redirect output\n");
        return 1;
    }

    printf("post-tee\n");

    return 0;
}

Explanation:

popen() returns a FILE*, but dup2() expects a file descriptor (fd), so fileno() converts the FILE* to an fd. Then dup2(..., STDOUT_FILENO) says to replace stdout with the fd from popen().

Meaning, you spawn a child process (popen) that copies all its input to stdout and a file, then you port your stdout to that process.