How do I run a program from another program and pass data to it via stdin in c or c++?

Question

Say I have an .exe, lets say sum.exe. Now say the code for sum.exe is

void main ()
{
 int a,b;
 scanf ("%d%d", &a, &b);
 printf ("%d", a+b);
}

I wanted to know how I could run this program from another c/c++ program and pass input via stdin like they do in online compiler sites like ideone where I type the code in and provide the stdin data in a textbox and that data is accepted by the program using scanf or cin. Also, I wanted to know if there was any way to read the output of this program from the original program that started it.

Answer 1

In C on platforms whose name end with X (i.e. not Windows), the key components are:

1. pipe - Returns a pair of file descriptors, so that what's written to one can be read from the other.

2. fork - Forks the process to two, both keep running the same code.

3. dup2 - Renumbers file descriptors. With this, you can take one end of a pipe and turn it into stdin or stdout.

4. exec - Stop running the current program, start running another, in the same process.

Combine them all, and you can get what you asked for.