Calling a command line program from Zorro and receiving output?

Can Zorro call a command line program from within a script and receive the program output as a string, or a numeric value?
If yes, how can this be done?

Depends on how the program produces output. The simplest way would be through a file.

The external program could write to a file, or do a cout to console. There is a C function "popen" in stdio that could receive such a stream, but I'm not sure if stdio is available in Zorro.

Perhaps you could give a short code snippet on how to call a command line command from Zorro as an example?

You can make a DLL that exports any functions you need, such as _popen and its brethren.

That said, I wouldn't use _popen(). I'd write a DLL that uses Boost Process to launch a child process and Boost Asio to communicate with its stdin & stdout - or perhaps with a pipe.

Or just do the file method. That's the five-minute solution.

EDIT - Honorable mention goes to the Windows API. Some of this stuff is actually included in Zorro's windows.h header.

Thanks for the suggestions! Yeah, I'm fine with the file method, still curious about the simplest code to execute a command line from Zorro. Is a custom dll the only way?

Thank you Petra, this is perfect!