On Fri, Sep 22, 2006 at 08:38:39AM -0700, Brian D. McGrew wrote: > Even assuming you mean > > int num_proc = system("cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -c processor >> > /dev/null 2>&1"); > > I dont see how this will give you the # of cpus. > > num-proc will only contain the status of the system call, not the result > of the grep, wont it? > ----- > > You're right, it's giving me the return value from grep, which is 0. I > need the string printed by grep ... How can I get this??? You'd need to use popen/fgets/strtol/pclose. But, to get number of CPUs you really should be using sysconf (_SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN), which is portable and unlike the grep does the right thing. Jakub