Validate program installation with C++ and system()

Currently I am writing an analysis script. This script outputs a graph generated by a third party program called gnuplot. In order to make the script more robust, I wanted to be able to abort at startup if gnuplot had not been installed. Hence, the post.

Requirements:
I need something that will quitely find out if the command exists and then kill the script.

Discussion:
I've been doing a lot of 'man 3' reading and scouring around the web looking for a quick and easy way to check if a program is installed. I tried to stay away from system() as other sources deemed it very dangerous and even *EVIL*. Thus, I thought I had to absolutely stay away from using system().

I tried using many of the std C exec* functions after calling a fork and writing my own function that buffered popen results. However, this seemed like too much code and must have been redundant to existing libraries. I hesitated using popen(), as it is basically system(), only buffered (both system and popen just fork and call a process with the shell). This lead me to hesitate the security of popen() as well. Turns out it, it didn't really matter.

Finally an answer:
The issue with system() is that it *can* be very dangerous. In system() the child process runs with the same user privileges as the parent. Thus, with admin rights, one can accidentally run system("rm -rf /"). Hence, problems occur when the programmer is imprudent with the system() argument. Under computer security pragma, this means system should never be used, as it could mess up. However, I finally concluded with my software developer sense that system() really is fine, especially with a static string as an argument. That being said, here are the lines:

if (256 == system("hash gnuplot 2>&-")) {
  cout << "Gnuplot must be installed to run script. Aborting.\n";
  exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

Enjoy!

Hello World

Hi!
My name is Ian Schillebeeckx and I am a young programmer interested in Algorithmic and Architectural Optimization and Android coding. I am currently interning at a gene sequencing company, Cofactor Genomics, where I am refactoring scripts in their existing pipeline. For fun, I code for the Android platform *slides glasses up nose*.

Through my own interest and my brother's encouragement, i've decided to finally start a blog and publish some of my trials and tribulations of my work and hobby. Hopefully my time can be of use later by others!

Anyways, here's the inaugural block of code:

int main() {
 cout << "!!!Hello World!!!" << endl;
 return 0;
}