Rejoice! Windows now uses a safer popen() which returns 0 on program launch fail, and allows you to see stdout on initial usages.

zsnes/src/win/safelib.c

@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+#define _POSIX_
+#include <io.h>
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <string.h>
+#include <process.h>
+#include <fcntl.h>
+
+#include "../argv.h"
+
+//These are here because I don't believe in MSVC's prefixing affixation
+#define dup _dup
+#define dup2 _dup2
+#define pipe _pipe
+#define flushall _flushall
+#define fdopen _fdopen
+
+//Introducing a popen which doesn't return until it knows for sure of program launched or couldn't open -Nach
+
+#define READ_FD 0
+#define WRITE_FD 1
+
+FILE *safe_popen(char *command, const char *mode)
+{
+  FILE *ret = 0;
+  char **argv = build_argv(command);
+  if (argv)
+  {
+    int filedes[2];
+
+    if ((*mode == 'r' || *mode == 'w') &&
+        !pipe(filedes, 512, (mode[1] == 'b' ? O_BINARY : O_TEXT) | O_NOINHERIT))
+    {
+      int fd_original;
+      FILE *fp;
+
+      if (*mode == 'r')
+      {
+        fd_original = dup(STDOUT_FILENO);
+        dup2(filedes[WRITE_FD], STDOUT_FILENO);
+        if (!(fp = fdopen(filedes[READ_FD], mode)))
+        {
+          close(filedes[READ_FD]);
+        }
+      }
+      else
+      {
+        fd_original = dup(STDIN_FILENO);
+        dup2(filedes[READ_FD], STDIN_FILENO);
+        if (!(fp = fdopen(filedes[WRITE_FD], mode)))
+        {
+          close(filedes[WRITE_FD]);
+        }
+      }
+
+      if (fp)
+      {
+        int status;
+        flushall();
+
+        status = spawnvp(P_NOWAIT, argv[0], (const char* const*)argv);
+        if (status > 0)
+        {
+          ret = fp;
+        }
+        else
+        {
+          fclose(fp);
+        }
+      }
+
+      if (*mode == 'r')
+      {
+        dup2(fd_original, STDIN_FILENO);
+      }
+      else
+      {
+        dup2(fd_original, STDOUT_FILENO);
+      }
+      close(fd_original);
+    }
+    free(argv);
+  }
+  return(ret);
+}