Output of C++ function system(command) does not show color in Linux terminal

Question

When I directly run a command in my Linux terminal, say "ls", the output is with color. However, when I run a C++ program which calls system("ls"), the output does not have color.

Is there way to get the latter way to also display colored output?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The answer for why there's no color lies here.

system() executes a command specified in command by calling /bin/sh -c command, and returns after the command has been completed.

sh -c ignores aliases. Perhaps somewhere you have an alias where ls means ls --color=auto.

So for example, if I do sh -c 'ls', I will get no color.

Proof:

wow ♪[01:04 AM][vnbraun@chernobyl ~]$ which ls
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
        /bin/ls
wow ♪[01:08 AM][vnbraun@chernobyl ~]$ sh -c 'which ls'
/bin/ls

Therefore, you can try doing system("ls --color=auto");.

Answer 2

You could run

 system("/bin/ls --color=auto");

But I don't think you really should run ls from your C++ program. Perhaps you want to use -some combination of- readdir(3), stat(2), nftw(3), glob(3), wordexp(3) etc etc....

I don't think that forking a shell which then runs /bin/ls is useful from a C++ program. There are simpler ways to achieve your goal (which I cannot guess).

You probably should read Advanced Linux Programming