Executing tasklist on Windows with popen in C without cmd.exe popup -

hello , thanks time.

i'm developing kind of monitoring application in c , fell in need of getting current tasks list. i'm using tasklist , getting output popen();

ptr = popen("tasklist /v", "r"); while(1) {     if(fgets(temp, 255, ptr) == null) break;     fputs(temp, log); } 

the problem fractions of second cmd.exe window pops , that's disturbing, because switches focus on new window , makes application go windowed-mode instead of fullscreen.

so, i've spent days looking on either popen ways or windows ones start process in 'hidden' mode/window got no result. things tried include:

cmd.exe /c tasklist /v start /b cmd.exe /c tasklist /v start /min /b cmd.exe /c tasklist /v start /min cmd.exe /c tasklist /v tasklist > somefile 

i tried last 1 read output somefile seems tasklist forces output stdout since no data written though file created.

hope in answer , thank anyway.

you can achieve calling createprocess passing sw_hide wshowwindow field of startupinfo struct , including create_no_window in dwcreationflags.

this method little brittle because may find app running on machine version of tasklist has different output format.

if want list of processes running can call enumprocesses.