Directing output of shell output called in system() function

I am trying to run a piece of code that calls the cksum and pass its output in to a variable in my code. I realise I can channel it to a text file and then open it and read it in, but this seems very dodgy and so I am hoping for a better way to do it. Please any ideas?

Code:

system("cksum /path/to/file")

 

As of my knowledge , there is no way other than writing to a file, and reading it.

refer the following url ,

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/c-programming/25410-store-command-output-into-variable.html

 

For those of you the come here looking for an answer to this question, I found the solution. You need to use popen().
just lookup examples and documentation for more detail