On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 03:02:54PM +0200, Gabor Gombas wrote: > This means that popen() _did_ succeed (it has invoked the shell). The > fact that the shell could not interpret the command and therefore exited > with an error is not popen()'s business anymore. I'm sorry for reporting the "bug". After your explanation, I could see that the documentation example is clear enough about popen() return value.