The
system() function hands the argument
string to the command interpreter
sh(1). The calling process waits for the shell to finish executing the command, ignoring
SIGINT and
SIGQUIT, and blocking
SIGCHLD.
If
string is a
NULL pointer,
system() will return non-zero, if the command interpreter is available, or zero if none is available. Otherwise,
system() returns the termination status of the shell in the format specified by
waitpid(2).