Now, output that *should* be going to ">outfile" is actually being printed/redirected to the screen.

Could you give us a short a short runnable program that demonstrates this?

And are you sure the child is writing to its STDOUT and not its STDERR? Try 

system("somecmd -args >outfile 2>&1");

[download]

In reply to Re: problem with system(), stdin, and stdout by ikegami
in thread problem with system(), stdin, and stdout by romero619

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